The Kitty Cat's New Master
by Cypher DS
Summary: Audrey's met with plenty of monsters in her lifetime, but having an insufferably cute cat-girl follow her around is more than even she can handle. Now the foul-mouthed party girl can see a whole invisible world of magical beings, and not all of them have kind intentions for her friends. Can Momo give her the edge she needs to bitch-slap this threat? [Part III of the TrioPop Series]
1. Cat's in the Cradle

**Author's Note:**

 **Thanks for stopping by! This story is the third in a series focusing on Audrey and her friends. You should be able to enjoy it on its own, but at this point there will be a strong continuity and many references to past events. If you're lost, check out "The Love Fairy's Apprentice" and "The Bounty Hunter's Escort" to see how Tiffany and Nikki set the stage; otherwise, read on for a fiesta with our foul-mouthed party girl!**

* * *

 **The Kitty Cat's New Master**

 **by Cypher DS**

 **o**

Audrey's head was a battlefield, and for once in her life, the pounding music and wild lights of Lusties nightclub offered no relief. A hundred tiny demons were mulching her brain into a pulp, and the one person who could ease the pain was ignoring her texts. That forced her to get bitchy.

 _=Hey! At the club, getting shit-faced on a school night! Whatcha got to say about that, cheerleader?=_

One minute, two minutes. The DJ switched to a techno track, and the thumping beat fell against her head with a mallet's force.

 _=Don't tell me you're sitting at home, studying like a good girl! C'mon, live a little!=_

She wondered how far she had to take it, how violently she had to prod the hornet's nest before she got a reaction. Another minute, and now the dull ache behind her eyes was an all-out throb.

 _=Got a selfie for ya! Look at all this booze I'm gonna drink! Betcha I'm gonna be waaaay too hungover for study session tomorrow! Sucks to be you, little miss good girl!=_

Nothing. No disapproving reply, no scowling emoji; not a single digital peep. Ready to roar out loud, Audrey stabbed at the on-screen keyboard with a flurry of fingers.

 _=Dammit, Tiffany! Where are you?=_

She slammed her phone on the table and shoved her back against the booth cushions, cursing them for being so soft and comfy when she wanted something firm to bang out her frustrations against. Everything was so screwed up tonight! On her table, a tray of colourful shooters sat untasted. Off at the bar, rich boys from the dental faculty were throwing down cash and pounding back shots. She hadn't approached one of them. The whole damn club could be empty and lifeless and Audrey wouldn't have batted an eye. With Tiffany missing, her mind was free to fester and channel its bitter energies onto a single pair of dancers out on the floor. Her eyes traced them with laser precision.

A short, geeky bluenette with glasses. Nikki – actually looking half-decent in that new black dress, and clearly having the time of her life as she grinded away to the music, rubbing her backside against an older, taller woman.

That second woman – the one who'd coaxed Nikki out of her nerdy little shell. Just looking at her made Audrey's chest ache. When the house lights plunged low, her body formed a perfect hourglass silhouette: sensual, womanly curves pressing and straining against the confines of her tight, silvery dress. Beads of sweat slicked down pale skin toned with muscle, while striking, white hair whipped back and forth to the DJ's rhythm. In this paradise of the night, she was goddess of the dance floor, and all eyes in the club starred at her in lustful worship.

Celeste.

What made her all the more amazing, Audrey decided, was that she didn't give a damn about the eyes roving over her perfect figure; she danced on in perfect disinterest. Her body belonged to the music, and her eyes smoldered only for her tiny partner. Celeste's hands wandered hungrily up and down Nikki's hips, urging the younger girl to press closer; begging for her lover to turn around and touch her in return.

Gritting her teeth, Audrey dove back to her texting. _=I swear to god, Tiff, if you're off doing another babysitting charity case, I'm gonna -=_

Lost for words, Audrey crumpled the phone into her purse and downed a shooter. The scalding liquid made her gag. _God dammit, why do these taste like shit tonight?_ Her pounding head, her aching heart; couldn't her stomach at least give her a break?

The last thing she needed was Nikki's newly-found optimism and pep, but now the bluenette was bounding up to her table for a breather, waving cheerfully as she mopped the sweat from her brow. "Hey, loser! Gonna join us for a dance?"

Audrey wrinkled her nose. Being the first of their group to get laid had gone straight to the little nerd's head.

"Yeah, no thanks. I start dancing with you lesbians, and all the dicks here are gonna think I've caught your queer germs and back the fuck away." _And I might just like it,_ she thought privately. "Go do your own thing."

Nikki nodded, no longer phased by her sharp tongue and bitchiness. She pointed to the fruity martini glass on the table. "Someone buy you another drink? They must really wanna dance with you or something."

 _Or something,_ Audrey scowled. In the corner of her eye she could spot her drink buddy watching her from the bar – some pretentious frat boy who still thought unbuttoned polo shirts and backwards baseball caps were the pinnacle of high fashion. Grinning like a loon, he raised his glass to her, confident that his tokens had earned him a place in her heart, and in her pants. Audrey made a show of pushing his drink far across the table, adding to her collection of rejected cocktails.

"It's probably roofied. Like fuck I'm touching that shit." Before Nikki could irritate her further, Audrey pre-emptively collected her purse and stood. "This music's giving me a migraine. I'm ducking out for a smoke break."

Nikki frowned, noting the baggie of hand-rolled joints in her purse. "That's your third 'break' tonight, Audrey. Doesn't that shit make you hallucinate?"

"Maybe if you had the balls to actually try one, you'd find out!"

"Yeah, no thanks. Oh, I gotta go – Celeste loves this song!"

Watching her friend skip back to the dance floor – literally jumping into her girlfriend's arms – made the bitter ache in Audrey's chest ratchet up a notch. Nikki howled wildly as she was spun around, and when she and Celeste gave up the pretense of dancing and just stopped for a mid-song make out session, Audrey clenched her eyes and ran for the door, determined to escape the torturous display.

* * *

Still no answer from Tiffany once she got outside. Audrey kicked a stray can and slumped against the patio wall. Well, the staff called it a smoker's patio, but it was really just a fenced-off concrete pad behind the club with a hastily thrown up awning to keep the rain off. A couple of pigeons huddled inside the awning's frame, some flies buzzed around, and behind the garbage cans in the shadows, too dark for her to see properly, she could hear someone wheezing and coughing hoarsely. _Probably some light-weight who can't hold his booze_ , Audrey scowled. What lovely company.

"Mrrow?" A final visitor to the outdoor lounge announced itself with a soft purr. Audrey turned to find a short-haired tabby cat perched on the fence, sporting rich, orange-brown fur and the largest pair of golden almond eyes Audrey had ever seen. It looked small and slim enough to be a kitten, but it studied Audrey with a strange intensity for something so young.

"What're you looking at? Piss off, I don't have any food!"

No reply. _No duh,_ Audrey told herself. The cat just continued to study her, so she went about her business. One lighter click later, Audrey had paradise tucked between her fingers. She took a deep and greedy inhale, but a sharp pain behind her eyes cut off any pleasure.

"Fuck," Audrey winced, jamming her free hand over her eyes. _What's wrong with me tonight?_ Smoking usually killed her headaches, but the way her skull was throbbing tonight, it felt like someone was chiseling into her brain with a crowbar. At this rate, she'd have to scarf down a whole plate of her 'special' brownies to feel any relief.

"Ever since that stupid trip with Tiff to the farmer's market," she grimaced. What had she eaten that day?

"Mrrow?" As if sensing her distress, the kitten hopped from its perch and padded forward until its warm fur was threaded between her ankles. Too tired to complain, Audrey let it rub against her shins. Having something close to her felt strangely nice. Soothing, really.

"You're way too trusting, y'know that? I could totally punt you across the alley if I wanted."

The kitten blinked once at her threat, then continued about its nuzzling. _Guess I'm stuck with you._ Sighing deeply, Audrey crouched low to the ground and let the stray hop onto her knees. "Oh wow, you're warm." Warm and inviting. Like a magnet, her hand was drawn to its fur. She half expected the stray to take a swing at her – God knows she'd deck any random stranger who tried to touch her – but to her surprise, the kitten actually flung its head against her palm, purring greedily and soaking up the warmth from her skin.

Okay, that was kinda cool.

"Truth time, cat: you've got it easy. All you have to do is eat, sleep and lick your asshole and everybody loves you. You've got no idea what kinda messed up stuff is out there."

For starters? How about invisible fairies from another dimension who went around gassing people with pheromone sprays so they'd fall in love? Tiffany claimed they were just busybodies who wanted to help the less fortunate. According to Nikki they were planetary cattle ranchers grooming the human race for some grand harvest. Audrey didn't give a rat's ass so long as they left her alone.

Then there were aliens from other worlds, not the friendly cartoon ones, but monstrous space criminals out to poach humans for the galactic black market. Lizard men and tentacled demon dogs and blue-skinned goat girls, oh my! The former had haunted her nightmares long enough, but now the last entry on that list kept her thoughts racing at night.

"But you know who the worst ones are?" Audrey asked the cat rhetorically. "It's the ordinary, everyday guys you pass on the street. Horny, disgusting pigs who think it's their God-given right to get girls drunk, strip 'em naked and have their fun with 'em."

Her hand was beginning to tremble again. Audrey took a deep, reassuring drag while she forced her fingers to stand still. Hallucinate? Puh-lease, she'd seen plenty of nasty shit already. In her world, there were monsters around every corner; they just knew how to blend in seamlessly.

The kitten's sandpaper tongue was now licking at fingers, and Audrey allowed herself a small sigh. _Maybe this is why Tiff can't get enough of these flea-bags_ , she mused. Be it a furry bundle of cuddles or a juicy bottle of schnapps, they each had their own go-to source when they needed a make-believe moment of intimacy. _I could get used to this one, though…_

And like everything good in her life, someone had to fucking ruin it. The guy crouching by the trash cans started hacking up a lung, startling the kitten from her lap and signaling for her headache to return. _Seriously?_

"Hey, asshole! If you can't take a little booze then get the fuck out of here! Hey, I'm talking to you, garbage man! Look at me, dammit!"

"Mrrow…" Her kitten companion didn't care much for her confronting a full-grown male. In her head, Audrey could imagine it pleading with her in a cutesy girl's voice: "Master, that's a bad man over there…"

But she was spoiling for a fight, and a wasted-out druggie with a black lung wasn't going to get the best of her. She flashed the cat an ' _I got this'_ smirk, while her fingers slipped around the metallic canister in her purse. _Just in case._

"Hey, shit-for-brains!" Her bark startled the shadowy figure, and a collection of cigarette butts tumbled from its palm. "Oh my God, were you seriously garbage picking those? Who the fuck even let you in?"

The figure clutched its head and gave a low moan as it looked over the spilled tobacco. The kitten shivered with another worried yowl – "uh oh…" – but Audrey just kept laughing. Even when the shadow looked at her directly, fists clenching, she didn't tense up. The guy was a good five steps away, and even if he lunged at her, she'd still have time to whip out her spray can and douse him between the eyes.

"Got a problem?" she taunted. "Come over here and say it to my face, because I'm not -"

Her mouth froze. _Huh?_ The figure rose to its feet, it took a sluggish step forward, and Audrey's heels wobbled back. _No way…_ The shadowy silhouette stepped fully into the light and Audrey had to shake her head clear and look again. Something was wrong with her eyes; something _had_ to be wrong with her eyes, because even under the full glare of the patio lights, the figure remained a black silhouette.

It towered over her, almost six feet tall; a broad chested male without hair, without clothes, _without a face._ Where eyes and mouth and nostrils should have glared fiercely, there was only a dark void staring her down, empty of humanity. Like smoke from a hellish fire, its black body blurred and rippled as it stepped towards her, little tendrils of darkness wafting off its core.

At her feet, the kitten warbled on their behalf. "S-scary…"

Audrey backpedaled, and something rough and leathery clipped her shoulder. She glanced to the side, and where she swore there'd been a nest of flies buzzing around the garbage, now there were huge, red garter snakes – buzzing through the air on dragonfly wings!

An evil giggle turned her attention to the awning. Where two pigeons had been roosting, now she saw a pair of hook-nosed, flappy-eared gremlins squatting like devilish monkeys, pointing and cackling at her confusion.

"What the fuck is happening?" Audrey backed away, and the black silhouette matched her pace, stumbling forward on unsteady legs. A rush of creeping cold spread over her body, like everything good and warm was being drained from her bones.

The shadow stretched a hand for her. Her kitten yowled. "Run!"

Audrey turned and bolted, following the scampering cat that was suddenly talking to her. "Get me out of here!" she screamed, batting the flying snakes that had decided her hair made an excellent nesting place.

"Over here, jump!" With an expert leap, the cat bounded onto the fence, and onward to the freedom of the alleyway. Audrey skidded to a stop before the wooden barrier. Her fingers couldn't even brush the edge.

"Fuck, I can't reach!" Why in God's name had she followed a friggin' cat? She should have ran for the door, back inside to the safety of the crowds where the world was still sane and no one was seeing monsters or talking to animals. Now the black shadow had lumbered in front of the door, blocking her escape. With a desperate cry, she made a leap to catch the fence.

Her high heels buckled and she fell to the ground.

"Master? Master, where are you?" Beyond the fence, the cat's little girl voice yowled in a blind panic. The shadow continued its slow, zombie lurch towards her. The gremlins in the awning gave a mad cheer, howling at her plight, and the dragonfly snakes swarmed her face, lashing at her skin and snatching at her hair.

"It's not real! It's not real!" But this was beyond any drug-induced trip she'd ever taken. The howling laughter, the sting of the snakes, the encroaching cold of the shadow. It was all real. "Somebody help me!"

"Where are you, master?" Audrey caught a dark flash across the night sky, the silhouette of a cat bounding over the fence, but nothing landed beside her. Where the cat should have pounced, the concrete bubbled and hissed as though it had melted into tar, and a new creature – far larger than any mere kitten - pulled itself out of the ground among a cauldron of black smoke, a demon beast clawing its way from the depths of hell.

Human-shaped and crouching on all fours like a wild animal. Audrey only caught a glimpse of this new shadow – a head lined with pointed ears, a whip-like tail swishing through the night air – but when this new monster locked its golden, snake-slit eyes on her, when its mouth split into a maw of grinning fangs – she knew enough to back away.

"Fouuund you," the creature sing-songed in the little girl's voice.

Audrey picked herself off the ground and bolted, immediately crashing into the monstrous shadow she'd been trying to avoid in the first place. She gasped. Instead of colliding with its chest, her hands sank _into_ its body, and the tendrils of black vapor that made up its mass writhed like a pit of snakes. Black hands seized her shoulders, and Audrey shrieked as though she'd plunged into an ice bath.

The shadow looked down on her with its empty face. Its jaw dropped as if to roar, but nothing opened in its featureless void. It made a sound like coughing, like sputtering, and then the lower half of its head straight up fell to the ground.

Audrey screamed as a swarm of black insects erupted into her face.

* * *

She bolted upright in her bed, immediately grimacing and shielding her eyes against the stinging sunlight. "What the? Morning?" Was – was that all just a dream?

Her hand patted blindly under her pillow for her phone. It was Friday morning, and her inbox was crammed full of Nikki's worried text messages. She skimmed the lot until she'd confirmed her suspicions: she _had_ been at the club last night, and she _had_ suddenly stomped off to the patio, but after that, Nikki was useless for piecing together what had happened.

Knowing the little nerd would worry needlessly, Audrey fired off a quick reply: ' _chill, I'm fine.'_ After confirming that there were still no messages from Tiffany, Audrey tossed her phone aside and grabbed at her still-aching head.

"Christ, she's gonna be so insufferably smug about this." Nikki would have the mother of all 'I told you so's ready when she found out her hard-core friend had gone tripping balls over a few measly joints. What would Celeste think? Dammit, what cover story should she use this time? _Hopped over to another bar? Got an invite for drinks with Tiffany's mom?_ Yeah, that could work.

But just what the hell had she seen last night? Those bugs, those gremlins, that living shadow. Everything had been so vivid, so real. Just thinking about that monster's touch sent a fresh course of shivers across her spine. "But it's over now," she told herself. Whatever bad juju she'd ingested had run its course, and she'd never have to see or hear or (she gulped) _feel_ those crazy nightmares ever again. That left one final question:

"How the hell did I get home last night?" Had she stumbled drunkenly through the city? Had Tiffany actually showed up and called a cab? Had some noble white knight scooped her into his arms and carried her home to her bedchamber? _Big, fat 'yeah right' there_ , she scoffed.

As if to disagree, a lump under the bedsheets shifted.

Audrey blinked. She tallied up her limbs: right leg, left leg, and next to that, an unaccounted-for, human-shaped lump of blanket, rising and falling to the rhythm of peaceful snoring.

She poked it with her toe, ushering a small grunt. It was warm and felt like human skin, not black, eldritch shadow tendrils, thank small miracles. Slowly, disbelievingly, Audrey cupped her hands over her mouth to contain her joyful squeals.

She'd done it! She'd actually done it! She'd actually gotten so blind-stinking-drunk that she'd gone home with somebody and – and –

Fuck! Her first time and she couldn't remember a damn thing! Had it hurt? Had she been fucked so thoroughly that her brain couldn't remember a single detail? What kind of guy had she bedded? Had he taken the lead? Had he let her clamber on top and take control? Was he a ten? Was he ugly as sin?

A brief aside: _was_ it a guy? The lump looked awfully small and feminine. A brief panic attack resurged, but Audrey fought the urge to gag. She had to be rational about this.

 _I've gotta know._ Steeling her nerves – and offering a brief prayer that she might find ivory hair and blue skin – Audrey ripped the sheets from her mystery lover.

And that was when the cruel bitch known as Life decided it was time to pour another round of 'what the fuck' and down it with a 'you can't be serious' chaser.

 _Oh no. No, no, no! No fucking way!_

A child's body, a head of chocolate brown hair. Some sort of ratty, Japanese-style robe. Oh, and the twitching folds atop her head? Cat ears. And that gentle softness rubbing up and down Audrey's calf? A fluffy tail.

 _Still wearing clothes,_ Audrey told herself. _We're both still wearing clothes._ Over and over, Audrey repeated that reassuring little mantra in her mind like it was glue that could hold up the cracked china dish of her brain.

It wasn't fucking working.

The little girl stretched in a peaceful, full-body yawn, a princess kitten waking from an enchanted slumber. Her eyelashes fluttered open, revealing the largest pair of golden-almond eyes Audrey had ever seen. Peering up at her bedmate, the girl's face lit with a precious smile.

"Mm, good morning, master! Did you have a nummy-yummy sleepy time just like Momo?"

Audrey screamed herself hoarse.


	2. But the Cat Came Back

The bathroom doorknob rattled and clicked; the wooden door buckled and shook. Curled in a fetal position on the toilet, Audrey pressed her hands over her ears, desperate to block out the hideous cries of the beast outside.

"Master? Is everything okey-dokey in there? If you open the door, Momo can help."

This wasn't real. None of this was real! There was no such thing as monsters or ghosts or animal-people! Yes, there were fairies, and okay, space aliens existed too, but a little girl who looked and acted like a human-sized kitten?

"Master, are we playing hide-'n-go-seek? Master?"

Okay, so maybe this was the least improbable entry on her list of freaks, but she wasn't about to validate the existence of this clingy little monstrosity!

"It's all in my head," Audrey told herself. Mind over matter, right? All she had to do was go about her morning routine, not responding to or acknowledging the yowling cat-girl at her door. Fairies died if nobody believed in them, right? Maybe that Disney crap worked on cat-girls too. "Yeah, just ignore her."

The remote for her bedroom's surround sound system was still on the bathroom counter. Audrey switched on one of her classical playlists – a little Chopin to soothe her nerves – and went about prepping herself for the day.

In the mirror, a pale girl with black hair made her launch back in fright. Then she remembered.

 _Right, dyed my hair again._ Raven black with streaks of soda pop blue framing her face, almost like she had a pair of horns curling down from her ears. Her fingers brushed the coloured streaks experimentally, wondering what she would look like with all-blue hair. _Would Celeste like that?_

Another knock at the door broke her reverie. "Maa-ster? Come find me, okay? This game's getting boring."

Audrey cranked the volume and dove in her grooming.

* * *

As much as she'd scoff otherwise, looks like hers didn't come naturally. On a good day, it took her at much as an hour to get ready, and that included showering, shaving her legs, plucking her eyebrows, moisturizing her skin and applying make-up, all with the delicacy and focus of an artist touching up her masterpiece canvas. Nobody gave you the time of day if you were frumpy and greasy. To Audrey, every day was the opening premiere of an opera, and the world expected its prima donna to look grand and glamorous beyond measure.

When she opened the door, ready to dazzle the world with her frilly, Lolita sundress and heels, the room was quiet and empty - only the crumpled blankets of her four-poster bed to greet her; only the April sunshine from the balcony invading her private chamber. Audrey nodded to herself, pleased that she'd willed away that hellion.

Big mistake. The cat-girl was squatting in front of her room's wall of fish tanks, tail swishing as she followed the colourful creatures gliding through the water.

"Momo's saying 'good morning' to your fishies, Master, but they're all super shy."

Audrey bit back the urge to scream. _All good, Aud. Play it cool._ There was nothing to rage about, because there was no one to get angry at. There was no need to scream, because there was no hungry brute threatening to turn her sea treasures into sushi. Mind over matter.

Still, she'd sure as hell do a head-count on her babies when she came back tonight.

She pushed through the double-vaulted doors of her bedroom and into a hallway of glittering chandeliers, gold-framed portraits and lavish, red carpets. Audrey brushed past the ostentatious decor without a second glance.

Nikki had asked her – that time she'd invited the nerd and her girlfriend over – why her family needed a home with so many rooms. "What do you even use them all for?"

Audrey had rolled her eyes. "It's for entertaining, duh." Was her father really supposed to impress all of his real estate clients and investors with some hovel of an apartment furnished with plastic chairs and video game posters?

Celeste, on the other hand, had been appropriately awestruck by the cavernous rooms and corridors. "This facility could easily house my entire village on Tendricide. Audrey, you must have a multitude of friends with which to share this with."

Caught off-guard, Audrey's tongue had stuck in her throat. A long and damning silence had followed.

"Of course I've got friends," she told herself now, but the empty echo of the hallways still surrounded her like mocking laughter.

* * *

Down the stairs, down three floors to the dining hall, where a buffet of pastries and breakfast foods greeted her with their warm aromas. She was about to dig in when a low, jolly voice at the table made her freeze: "Audrey! How's my little angel pie this morning?"

"Daddy?" _What's he -?_ Audrey quickly arranged her face in the brightest, bubbliest smile possible. "Good morning, daddy bear! I thought you were still away on that business trip!"

The obese man at the head of the table laughed off her surprise, setting down his utensils to belch loudly and pour himself a liqueur from the beverage cart at his elbow. "Finished early, and I caught the red eye into town last night. I thought: breakfast with my little pumpkin – what could be better?"

"Oh daddy, you're so silly!" _Shit, I don't smell like pot, do I?_ Audrey discreetly popped a stick of gum into her mouth and chewed vigorously before skipping over and greeting her father with a kiss. "Did you buy me that new dress I asked for?"

"Ordered and in transit, my angel pie."

" _In transit?_ Daddy, now what am I supposed to wear this weekend?" Ugh, men really were useless. "Can I at least get some money to buy something, daddy bear? Oh, and I wanna change my hair again!"

Her father laughed like a simpleton as he rifled through his wallet. "If it's for my angel pie, how can I say no?"

 _You don't,_ Audrey snorted as she counted up the bills. _Only a hundred?_ "Daddy, this isn't –" she stopped, interrupted by a new presence slamming the door behind her.

 _Fuck, not her._

Like a thundercloud on a picnic, the woman blocked off all good cheer. Dark hair withering with gray, and a weary, Asian face lined with stress and baggy eyes. She wasn't even dressed, just a loose-fitting nightgown and a robe flopping off one shoulder. No surprise as to why she'd left her room: the bottle dangling from her hand was empty.

Audrey busied herself gathering breakfast, while her father actually made an attempt at conversation. "Kasumi, good to see you're awake. How's the new painting?"

"Ripped it up… Wrong… all wrong…"

Audrey grimaced. The lazy bitch couldn't even make the effort to speak in a full sentence.

"Darling, Doctor McAlister said you should save your draft work."

"What does he know?" Her hand shot across the table for the scotch, only for the decanter to be pulled from her reach. Audrey's father coughed and pushed forward a small tumbler holding three enormous pills.

Kasumi glared at him with a childish petulance. " _Fine._ " She threw back the cup of pills, chased them down with a gulp of water and stuck out her tongue to prove she wasn't hiding any. "Satisfied?"

Audrey followed the exchange stiffly and silently, wondering when her father was going to bring up the bug crawling over Kasumi's face. "What the hell happened to you? You've got something –"

Audrey stopped. 'Something' didn't do the great, black beetle justice. Easily the size of a smartphone, an unnatural red light pulsed from under its carapace, but Kasumi just went about pouring herself a drink as though it was a mole she'd grown accustomed to. From a distance, her cheek appeared to have sunk into a dark hollow. Her face had never looked more skull-like.

"You really aughta check your face. Just sayin'."

Kasumi scrunched in confusion but swiped anyway. Her fingers passed _through_ the bug like it was nothing but shadow. Then, the woman had the gall to glare at _her_ like she was the crazy one! "Can't stand cats… you know that," she muttered.

 _Cats?_ Audrey's eyes zipped towards daddy, who was laughing merrily as he dropped bits of his croissant into the delighted mouth of the friggin' cat-girl!

"Aren't you precious? Audrey, you never told me you got a cat!"

"Are you blind? That's a little girl!"

"Ah, so it's not a 'he'?" The kitten purred happily as her father scratched behind her ears.

"Take it away," Kasumi grimaced, forcing the beetle to reposition. Audrey was at her limit.

"What is wrong with you people? There's bugs crawling over your face; there's some freaky furry prancing around in a bathrobe; how are you all staying this calm?"

"Pumpkin, I'm not upset that you got a new pet. My angel pie can have as many animals as she wants; anything to make my little girl happy."

"I have _sensitivities,_ " Kasumi moaned.

 _I need a drink,_ Audrey thought. Before daddy could object, she helped herself to the scotch, and the strangest thing happened as she titled back her glass: The girl disappeared. With her luck it was just another damned trick of the light, but she had to be sure.

Normal look. The cat-girl squatted on the floor. Audrey raised her glass and looked through the curved surface. Gone.

No, not gone, just so much shorter. A proper kitten, one with whiskers, paws, and chocolate-brown fur now sat next to her father.

Glass down. Girl.

Glass up. Cat.

Everyone was staring at her. "Angel pie, are you -?"

"Fine! Just fine, daddy bear. Whoops, I've gotta get to campus now!" As she backpedaled, Audrey tucked the shot glass into her purse for safekeeping. "I'm taking the limo, daddy bear, okay? Thanks, love you, bye!"

She had no such goodbye for the woman who was her mother.

* * *

"Wait for me, Master!" Bloody hell, the cat-girl was following her straight to the garage!

"Campus!" she barked at the driver – it was the black guy today, and he didn't bat an eye as she slammed the back door in the face of a little animal-girl. Behind the limousine's tinted windows a sad kitten with warbling, amber eyes watched her speed off. _The glass, something about the glass_ , Audrey realized. Fuck, did this mean she had to spend the rest of her life hiding behind lenses? She didn't care what the fashion world said about the hipster revival; she was _so_ not putting up with eyeglasses.

Desperate for a sense of control, Audrey punched the number for the hair salon into her phone. "Hey Chico, I want my hair re-done! Coloured, cut – the works. Make it blue this time."

A tired sigh crackled through the receiver. "I have a name, you know. It's Kyanna, and I'm booked solid this weekend, Audrey."

"So cancel somebody! C'mon, if you do my hair right this time, I'll tip you mad money. Or have you already got enough diapers to last the month?"

A low growl. "Bitch, I am up to my eyes in stress right now. If you so much as mention my son, I swear I'll –"

"You'll what? You want your manager talking to you about another customer complaint, hmm?"

Another sigh, this one of resignation. "I'll text you the time, princess."

Kiarra (or whatever her name was) hung up first. That was different. _What's crawled up her ass and gotten her so pissy?_ Audrey shrugged off the oddity and thumbed over to Tiffany's profile. Once more, the line directed her to voice mail.

"Screening your calls again? You've been a no-show all week; what's going on, Tiff? Look, call me, okay? I need to talk to someone normal."

That headache was returning with a vengeance.

* * *

As per routine, the driver let her off a couple blocks from campus. Audrey had learned to be selective about showing off her family's wealth. Designer clothes and shoes might get you mad attention, but start rolling up with fancy cars and hired help and suddenly everyone glared at you like you were living cancer.

When she barged out of the car, the world and all of its fucked up weirdness hit her hard.

Some dopey hipsters were playing hacky sack on the campus quad. A circle of bouncing, cartoony radishes were springing alongside the game. The veggies smiled maniacally as they sang cultic nursery rhymes:

" _Das sind mir unbekannte blumen! Schneide sie ab! Schneide sie heraus!"_

More dragonfly snakes buzzed around a crowd of stoners, perching on the tips of their bongs and inhaling the smoke like honeybees sucking nectar from flowers. Crows with stilt-sized legs were shadowing a group of girls carrying heavy textbooks, pecking needle-like beaks into their shadows. The campus was suddenly overrun by a parade of weird-ass cartoons from looney-land, and nobody seemed to give a shit!

"There's a freakin' Chinese dragon circling up in the sky," she ranted to whoever could hear. For God's sake, it was cherry red and sporting the most racist Fu Manchu moustache on its scaly lips. "Are you people all so stoned you can't see shit anymore?"

And there, on the other side of the lawn, staring and smiling at her like the world's most adorable stalker was –

"Master! Momo had to run super-duper hard to catch up, but here she is!"

Audrey had never felt more motivated to get to her physics lecture early. She tore into the engineering building, up stairwells and down hallways, and when she found the auditorium, she slammed the doors and barricaded it with her body. The terrified look on her face was mirrored by the bug-eyed panic of the Asian kid standing behind the teacher's podium.

"Who the fuck are you?" Audrey snapped. She didn't dare move, and neither did he. He tried to take a step back, but a flash of pain across his face kept him rooted to the spot. At least she assumed it was pain. The way he groaned and gripped at the podium, it was almost like he'd just -

Exhaling in relief, the boy spun, and Audrey's face contorted at the embarrassing sound of jeans being zipped up. _No fucking way, did he just -?_

"Belrose? That you?" An Asian woman in a suit jacket rose from behind the podium, weaving drunkenly as she adjusted her eyeglasses and wiped her mouth. "Huh, I guess I _did_ leave that door unlocked."

"Y'think? Shit, how's walking in on you the most normal part of my day?"

Miss Yumi just shrugged, shameless as ever.

"Welp, introductions! Jeong-Yang, this is Audrey from my second-year class. Belrose – Jeong-Yang. He's one of our international students on scholarship. Say hello, Jeonny boy."

Instead of greeting Audrey, Jeong-Yang bolted out the closest door.

"Jeong-Yang needed some extra tutoring," Miss Yumi coughed, not that Audrey needed the cover story.

"Fucking awesome! He go down on you too?"

"His English is crap, but between you and me, that boy has a talent for oral presentations."

"Fuckin-A," Audrey crowed as she offered Miss Yumi a high-five. Now this was a teacher! Audrey could feel the stress of her crazy visions melting away in this comforting presence.

Aiko - she insisted Audrey use her first name off-hours - was the bomb. She smoked weed, she partied hard, and she fucked every guy she came across. Every girl too, if Aiko's boasting rang true. Plus, she got paid like a boss to stand around and read PowerPoint slides to a bunch of jaded college kids while she farmed out her marking to a teaching assistant. Aiko was living the good life, and Audrey could only dream of landing a gig just as sweet.

"So, you have fun last night, kid?"

"Gave a hand job to a Brazilian guy, got a new number," Audrey shrugged. The lies flowed so easily when she was with Aiko. The teacher never questioned or disapproved. "Say, you see anything weird today?"

"Like you getting to class early?"

" _Pfft_ , never mind." Maybe everything _was_ just in her head. "Hey, Aiko, got any more tips for picking up chicks? It's for my friend. You know, the barista who's so far in the closet it's not funny?"

"Hmm, this is the one who's going after a dom, right? Big trick with alpha dykes is to make them think they're in charge; that they're taking the initiative. Gets their lady-dicks all puffed up if they think you're a sweet, little virgin who's never had a good, rough lovin' before. Hmm, tell your friend she needs to get this girl to teach her something."

"What, like going over homework?"

"No, smartass. Okay, look - I went out with this Mexican chick the other month, but she was cold as ice to start, right? Then I got her to teach me all the dirty words in Spanish. Holy fuck, when I started whispering all those words back into her ear… _ohh shit_ , I swear she was just aching to fuck me right then and there."

 _Teaching, huh?_ Audrey filed away that tidbit for later. "So what happened with this Mexican mama? C'mon, what happened after that?"

The auditorium door slammed shut, and a new voice, crisp and professional, added her own thoughts. "After that, Dr. Yumi, you naturally took it upon yourself to disclose your complete sexual history – including all STIs – and obtained clear and unambiguous consent from this partner before proceeding. Because anything less would be a contribution to the rape culture plaguing our society."

Like a teen girl caught out after curfew, Aiko paled.

Audrey rolled her eyes. _Not this insufferable bitch again_. The intruder was a black chick, skinny as a rail and flat as an ironing board, and compensating for her shitty bod with the stupidest hair and accessories this side of Nikki's sci-fi conventions. Sure enough, today her dreadlocks were bundled up in neon blue pigtails, while her eye contacts were coloured red and blue. The only consistent part was the bitch's hoity-toity attitude. Torn jeans complimented an off-the-shoulder top emblazoned with another social justice slogan. Today's billboard read _#FuckColumbusDay_.

Zoey gave their teacher a courteous nod, and a perfunctory one to Audrey. "Greetings, Doctor Yumi. Belrose."

"You know she needs a PhD to be a doctor, dumbass."

"Check your privilege, Belrose! If Ms. Yumi chooses to self-identify as a doctor, then you have no right to deny her preferred personhood. Isn't that correct, Dr. Yumi?"

"Huh? Oh y-yeah, absolutely!" The teacher bobbed her head compliantly, while she furiously wiped her palms on the back of her skirt. "Yeah, I'm all for empowering our identities!"

"Besides," Zoey continued, "with all of the institutionalized racism and sexist wage gaps plaguing this campus, it's nigh impossible for an Asian woman such as Dr. Yumi to obtain the financial opportunities to both support herself _and_ further her education."

"You're so right, Zoey! Gotta fight the power! Right, Audrey?"

Ugh, that posh, know-it-all attitude. That calmly upturned lip. God, the urge to kick the ever-loving crap out of this smug, brown-nosing bitch was overpowering. "What're you doing here anyway? Sniffing out signatures for your latest crappy Internet petition?"

"I am here on a personal matter. Dr. Yumi, I have come to a new understanding of my gender: I am now a Class-3 cybernetic android _._ My pronouns are now _thou_ and _ye_ ; as in, 'thou may go to the bathroom', or 'ye may answer the next question'. I trust this will not be an issue."

"Issue? Naw, naw, we're cool. Everything's cool! Uh, Zoey darling, that conversation earlier, I was just –"

" _Dr. Yumi,_ the language you were using could encourage many vulnerable female students to put themselves in unsafe sexual situations." Zoey put on her most judgemental glare, and Audrey knew what was coming next.

 _Oh shit, bitch's bringin' out the 'P-word'._

"Dr. Yumi, your language was _very_ _problematic!"_

 _OHH SNAP!_

"Still," Zoey conceded, "it was only Belrose this time, and we all know she's a lost cause when it comes to preventing the spread of venereal diseases."

"Oh, fuck off."

"Nevertheless, you should take the time to re-educate yourself about various forms of consent. I think it would be most enriching for your career if you attended my next presentation at the campus Womyn's Center. Faculty support is always appreciated."

At this point, even a puppy cowering before a rolled-up newspaper had more dignity than Miss Yumi. "Yeah, yeah! Sign me up, Zoe! Us minority girls gotta stick together, right?"

Zoey rolled her eyes, but Miss Yumi's compliance seemed to satisfy her for now. Nodding firmly, she limped off to her preferred seat.

 _Fucking hell, even her walk has to be 'special'!_ The loud-mouthed turd always made a show of waddling like a stiff-legged penguin, because _of course_ a 'cybernetic android' couldn't just walk around like a normal human being. _Fucking snowflake._

"Yeah… great," Miss Yumi mumbled. "Sooo great, much thanks. I'm so screwed…"

Audrey offered up her purse flask but Miss Yumi declined, indicating her personal thermos packed with her strongest 'stress relief' medication.

"So, kid, what did you and our star student get up to last night? Got a very polite e-mail from Miss Honours Cheerleader telling me that she'd be missing class, and if I could forward all of the notes. You get her hammered or something?"

"What do I look like, Tiff's secretary?" Inside, Audrey's stomach sank. _She told Miss Yumi, but not me? What the hell is going on?_

Zoey gave a sharp, scornful laugh. "So Miss Maye will be absent yet again? How unfortunate. At this rate, even with all of her white privilege, she'll find it quite difficult to maintain her GPA. Perhaps her scholarships will be awarded to someone truly in need of equity."

 _Oh fuck off already!_ Audrey had a kraken-level torrent of swears ready to unleash, but the point was moot once the other students started filing in and drowning out her voice. Undeterred, she settled for pissing off Zoey with her mere presence, and took a seat in the 'cyborg's' row, making sure to spritz herself with the most pungent perfume in her handbag for maximum irritation.

 _Just a regular day of putting bitches in their place,_ Audrey assured herself. _No weird-ass visions; this is purr-fe… perfect._

As usual, Miss Yumi's lecture was boring as hell, but at least today's class went by faster without Tiffany's constant stream of questions. Odd that she'd miss all those interruptions, Audrey reflected, but Tiff always asked something insightful and forced Miss Yumi to clarify her textbook mumblings. _White privilege my ass. Tiffany could teach this class better than anyone!_

Audrey's eyes wandered from the overhead projector to the tall windows beaming sunlight from the auditorium's upper walls. She could hear a tapping noise against the glass. _Pigeons?_ _Some asshole tossing rocks?_ She glanced up, and her body froze.

The friggin' cat-girl, pressing her nose against the glass and knock-knocking her fist on the pane! Audrey tried to play it cool, but their eyes had already met, and with a happy smile, the feline stalker started banging louder. Audrey's freaked-out face didn't go unnoticed.

"Stop looking at me," Zoey hissed from across the row.

Was that bitch pretentious _and_ blind? "Why the fuck would I look at you?" Audrey whisper-hissed. Crap, now the cat-girl was pounding both fists for attention. "Cut that out!"

" _Cut that -?_ Are you threatening me?"

"Not you, the other retard!"

"Belrose, that term is very proble-"

Audrey flipped her the bird. For Zoey, that was the last straw. The millennial sprang to her feet and waved her hand frantically.

"Dr. Yumi? Belrose is objectifying me! I'm feeling very unsafe around her! Please tell her to leave the class!"

Aiko rolled her eyes. "Hey, Red, you wanna quit ogling your classmate?"

"Why the hell would I be eye-fucking that bitch?"

"There, you see? She's denying my sexual appeal because I'm a person of colour! Dr. Yumi, you have to –" Zoey's hand flew over her heart. "Y-you have to –" Zoey swooned and buckled at the knees. A murmur of concern raced through the classroom as the millennial clutched her windpipe and started hyperventilating.

"Can't…. Can't breathe. I can't – Dr. Yumi, _please!_ She – she's _triggering_ _me!_ "

The panic was serious now – students clambering from their desks and dialing their phones for help. Audrey just put a palm to her aching temple. Were people _still_ buying this asthma attack bullshit?

As the classroom deteriorated into chaos, Miss Yumi quietly uncapped her thermos and gave herself a long and much-needed shot of self-medication. "God, I wish I had something stronger," she sighed. "Hey Red, how's about you go take a washroom break or something? Take five, or ten; hell, take the whole period."

Audrey gladly grabbed her gear and stood up, squeezing out of her row as a gaggle of Zoey's snowflake support group pressed in to coo and comfort the poor, oppressed child. Audrey imagined a sick grin across the black girl's face, but she didn't look back to confirm. The cat-girl had leapt out of the windowsill. She was coming after her again.

* * *

Leaving class was a stupid idea: the hallway outside the auditorium was lined with floor to ceiling windows. Audrey was a sitting duck out here. Walking briskly in search of cover, Audrey whipped out her phone and speed-dialed Nikki.

"Audrey? I'm at work, y'know."

"Nikki, you seen Tiffany? She's not in class today. _Again._ " Something truly fucked up was going on, but Tiffany would know what to do.

"Um, no. I kinda think she wants some time alone after what happened. I mean –" A sudden pause. "Wait, you mean she didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what? What's going on, Nik?"

The nerd girl clammed up tighter than a virgin's legs. "Um, sorry, I'm not supposed to say anything. Um, I gotta go, so … yeah."

 _Click._ Just what was going on here? Audrey tried calling the cheerleader again, and was redirected to voicemail. "Tiff, talk to me! What the hell is going on with –"

Audrey stopped. Not that she wanted to; oh, she wanted nothing more than to rant and rave at her so-called friend some more, but she was no longer capable of speaking. The dreaded chill emanating from across the hallway had paralyzed her jaw and her legs.

The black shadow silhouette stared her down once more.

"Not you," she whimpered into the phone. Even in broad daylight, with fresh sunlight streaming through the full-panel windows, the figure remained cold and black as death. This time, she could clearly see the greasy soot that made up its body; see how it spun and swirled like a thundercloud packed into a human shell, a storm on the move.

It was moving for her.

"Stay away, stay away!"

"Something the matter?" An older gentleman in a suit, approaching from the opposite direction. Shit, Audrey knew this guy. Dean Wormwood, one of the senior admin. He'd sat opposite the table when they'd forced her to repeat the whole story about the night at the frat house.

"It's after me! Can't you fucking see it?"

"Pardon me? Care to repeat yourself, young lady?"

Oh, wasn't this rich? A demonic abomination was stomping towards them both, and this geezer was getting triggered by her cuss words! You could probably hold this ass-hat up at knifepoint and he'd be scowling about the length of your mini-skirt! Now the shadow thing had marched up into Wormwood's face, and he had the nerve to keep staring at her like she was the monster!

"It's right there! In front of you!"

"In front of wh-UUH!" The shadow hoofed Wormwood in the crotch, and the man crumpled into a fetal position. Clearly this thing could make itself felt if not seen. Obstacle eliminated, it turned to her again.

"Get away!" Audrey ducked around the corner, where she plucked the metal canister from her handbag and sprayed a stream of bear mace at the monster's head for a sold five seconds. It didn't even flinch; if anything it seemed puzzled, tilting its head as to question why she was adding her atomized particles to its stormcloud body.

Irritated, it batted away her arm and ripped her purse from her shoulder.

"Hey, that's my stuff, you fucker!"

Its mouthless body roared at her with enough force to throw her to the ground. It raised its foot, ready to stomp her into submission, when –

"NYAA!"

A flash of brown fur and blue cloth leapt over Audrey's head and tackled the shadow to the ground.

Her stalker, the friggin' cat-girl.

Except now, the sickeningly-cute cosplayer had made a new transformation. She wasn't just a cat; she was an all-out animal, wild and vicious as she raked her nails through the shadow's vaporous body, tossing streams of dark energy left and right like she was digging out its entrails. She was disembowelling this shadowy motherfucker, and she was doing it all with a puffy blue bow tied to the tip of her tail.

Audrey didn't know whether to be impressed or terrified.

Writhing and roaring under the torment, the shadow relented. Its body slumped into a formless vapor that slithered frantically down the hallway, retreating like a cowardly snake. Audrey's purse, still caught in the tail end of its mass, bounced along the floor for the ride.

"Get back here, you meanie!" Bounding forward on all four limbs, the cat-girl chased the fleeing cloud to a grate in the wall, where it poured itself into the ventilation system like a mouse diving into its hole. Audrey's purse caught against the grate, and a small panic ensued as the shadow fought to pull its catch through. A snarling cat-girl batting at the metal cover convinced it to give up.

"Cheater," the cat-girl snapped, daring the monster to come out and face her again.

After half a minute of her posturing, she grew bored and gave up. Chomping down on Audrey's designer handbag, she skittered back on all fours and spat the chewed-up leather at her feet. Audrey cringed, but she didn't dare put her fingers within reach of the little hell-spawn, this demon in kitten's clothing. The cat-girl smiled sweetly, her fingers black with the shadowy residue she'd dug from the silhouette's abdomen. Any fool who saw her now would assume the little cutie had been scooping up handfuls of blackberry jam.

 _She could rip me apart and draw finger-paintings with my bloody guts,_ Audrey realized, and yet the damn thing just kept smiling at her!

"That was scary, Master! You aughta be more careful. Momo's had ta rescue you two whole times now, and you're super heavy t'carry."

Audrey snatched up her purse and pulled out her shot glass. She held it to her eye. Cat-girl. Cat. Cat-girl. Cat, but no matter the form, the creature kept those golden-almond eyes that smiled at her with such adoration.

Audrey sighed and stowed away the glass. "Cutting it a little close there, dumbass! That thing was gonna stomp out my teeth!"

"You'd be smooshy like jelly," the creature agreed.

"Well don't just sit there waiting for someone to scratch your ass. C'mon!"

"Nyaa? Where're we going, Master?"

"They don't allow animals on campus, fuzz-for-brains, so we're going to the park." She spun around. "What the fuck do I call you, anyway?"

"Momo!" the cat-girl chirped. "Momo's name is Momo!"

"Momo. Ugh, whatever. Just get moving!"

Audrey needed some answers, and this 'Momo' kid had a whole lot of explaining to do.


	3. Cat Scratch Fever

Audrey notched it up as much overdue karma that the park still looked normal for a Friday afternoon. The usual try-hard joggers, the old farts feeding pigeons, but no one was transforming into a freaky crab person or stalking shadow.

First stop was her go-to snack vendor, the one who sold cheap poutine when she needed an infusion of post-binging grease to fight off a hangover. Audrey bought a plate of the gravy-soaked fries, glanced at Momo's watering mouth, and then bought another.

"Take it. I am not picking hairballs out of my food."

"Thank you, Master! Momo's so happy to be with you!"

 _Momo this, Momo that._ The kid was a regular chatterbox, spouting enough facts for ten online dating profiles once she had Audrey's ear. Momo's favorite colour was gold - "the gleamy kind", she emphasized - and she loved napping in the sun.

"Momo likes the spring time, an' running in the park, an' playing with her toysies. Do you have a favorite toy, Master?"

Audrey smirked, thinking of a very private drawer in her nightstand and the Not-Safe-For-Children places she could take this conversation, but decided the question was better ignored. _She's so young it's creepy_.

Creepier still were her animal mannerisms. Momo insisted on walking everywhere on all fours, padding about on her palms and toes. It looked awkward as fuck, but she was surprisingly nimble. When they sat down at a park bench to eat, Momo squatted cat-style with her knees tucked up at her shoulders and knuckles folded in between her legs.

 _She even eats like a cat,_ Audrey grimaced: shoving her face directly into the plate without a thought of using fingers. When Audrey held up her shot glass to watch, Momo looked like a perfectly ordinary tabby cat – leaning over her plate and nibbling away at her fries with dainty kitten bites.

Zooming into human mode revealed a far more disgusting, gravy-smeared sight. Appetite wrecked, Audrey quickly pushed her plate aside.

It hurt to look at the kid eating. Literally – that headache from the other night flamed up like a wildfire whenever she focused on the cat-girl, like her brain was overclocking itself trying to process her existence.

"So how come I can see and talk to you, but everyone else just sees a cat?"

"Momo dunno," the cat-girl shrugged as her tongue cleaned the gravy from Audrey's now-empty plate. "Maybe it's because you're special, Master!"

"No shit, Sherlock. But what about these other monsters; I mean, you see 'em too, right?" Audrey pointed to a flock of pigeons pecking at an old lady's bread crumb offerings. Through her shot glass, they all registered as birds, but without her lens, two of them shifted into the hook-nosed gremlins she'd seen at Lusties nightclub. The duo cackled and exchanged high-fives over the free handouts.

"Momo sees 'em," the cat-girl confirmed. "They're there. They've always been there, but people just don't pay good attention. Not like you, Master. You're smart and see lotsa stuff, just like Momo!"

Yeah, the whole 'just like me' pep talk was _so_ not cheering her up.

"But those two aren't birdsies," Momo went on, "They're griblins. Griblins like eating trash an' making poopies on people."

Momo had further corrections to offer: The flying snakes she thought were dragonflies? No, those were draydids. They liked 'sleepy smoke' and people who relaxed a lot. The bouncing radishes were bib-bobbers, and seeing happy people made them wanna jump and sing. The stilt-legged crows were cawglers, and they liked chasing after people who were stressed out and worried.

"What about _that?_ "

Audrey pointed to the elephant in the room – the cherry red Chinese dragon trailing leisurely loop-de-loops in the sky.

"Oh, that's Bessie." Momo's voice went quiet, like she was tip-toeing around the topic of a disabled relative. "Bessie's nice. Not very smarty, but nice. Bessie like tummy rubs an' eating meat."

"Meat. Lovely, I am so sleeping with the windows shut tonight. Thanks a bunch."

Under Audrey's glass lens, 'Bessie' had no normal equivalent, and vanished entirely. Some of these weirdos showed up as animals; others, like the vegetable bib-bobbers were fully cloaked and undetectable.

 _At least with the pigeons and the crows you could shit-kick those away_ , she reasoned. How did you protect yourself from a giant, invisible dragon that decided to make you her lunch? Which brought up the other point of awkwardness:

"What the fuck was that shadow?"

Momo shifted uncomfortably. Just mentioning that dark abomination chilled the air around them.

"Momo's never seen one of those before. They smell like something Momo remembers but –" sifting through her cat brain for memories just made Momo shudder. "Nyaa… Master, that thing gives Momo the shakies. You should stay super far from it, okay?"

"S'not like I'm looking to pick a fight! That thing came after _me_!"

It was weird – all the draydids and bib-bobbers and whatsa-woodles seemed to just watch people passively, or take advantage of their animal disguises to score free food. Scratch that, they pretty much were just animals. _Ducklings,_ Audrey thought. _Ugly ducklings that started hanging around the pond and completely forgot they were swans._

But last night and today, that shadow had directly targeted her. "C'mon, kid – you've gotta give me something to work with."

"Sorry, Master, but that's all Momo knows."

Audrey sighed. "Well wasn't this just the biggest waste of time."

"It wasn't a waste! Momo had lotsa fun talking with you, Master, and those Frenchy Fries were super nummy!" The cat-girl's eyes drifted off nostalgically. "Momo hasn't eaten food that yummy in a long time…"

 _Uh oh._

"And that's why …"

A warning light tripped in Audrey's brain. She did not like the look this creature was giving her - the way she meekly bit her lip, how her ears flattened pathetically; the telltale signs of a little girl gathering the courage to bear her soul.

"That's why Momo wants to stay with you!"

"Fuck no."

"Nyuh?"

"There is no way in hell you are staying with me."

Momo's eyes melted into watery desperation.

"B-but … Momo promises she'll be the bestest kitty ever! She knows all about catchin' miceys, an' – an' she knows how to use the little kitty's room! We can play t'gether, go for walkies t'gether, an' Momo can teach you all about kitties!"

 _Hell no_ , Audrey grimaced, but the kid was already clapping her hands in excitement, the deal a done thing in her cat brain.

"Let's start right now, okay? Momo's gonna give you a Kitty Quiz! Number one: what's a kitty's favouritest food in the whole wide world?"

Well, if playing this stupid game shut her up… "Umm, fish?"

"Huh?" Momo was aghast. "NO, MASTER, fishies are our friends! They're not for tasting! The real answer is 'kitties like tuna'!"

"But tuna's just –"

Audrey stopped herself. She may have given zero fucks, but this was treading into 'Santa Claus isn't real' territory.

"Okay, number two! Where do kitties like getting scratchies best of all?"

Momo leaned forward and batted her eyelashes expectantly. There was something very self-serving about all these 'quizzes', Audrey decided. "I dunno. Your ass?"

"Huh? No, behind our earsies!" A sliver of doubt darkened Momo's expression. "Master, you're not very good at Kitty Quizzes. Next, you'll be telling Momo you don't even know what a group of kitties is called!"

Desperate for reassurance, Momo pressed in close for the answer. Audrey just shrugged her arms.

" _A clowder!_ Kitties live in – they live in …"

Weary and dazed, Momo plopped back on her haunches. "Misato knew that one right away…"

"Misa- who?" but the cat-girl was already shaking her head clear.

"This is super bad, Master. How're you gonna take care of Momo if you don't know anything about kitties?"

"Whoa, time out! I never said I was taking care of anybody! I mean –" Shit, this was so messed up.

"Look, you really don't want to be hanging out with me. I'm ... not age appropriate, let's put it that way. But I've got this friend – Tiffany – and she's a real fur-fag when it comes to cats. Got 'em on her phone, sticks big posters of them up at her place. S _he's_ the one you aughta be cozying up to, not me. See?"

Momo followed her pointing finger to one of the park's community message boards, and the university admissions poster stapled to the corkboard. The blonde, blue-eyed girl smiling back at them seemed like an odd choice for an ad campaign - homely and plain in her beauty; just a girl-next-door to sweep away into the crowd - but there was something undeniably honest and genuine about her smile; a kindness and a warmth that made you stop and admire her. She was dressed in a doctor's white coat and stethoscope, even though her actual degree was nursing.

 _"I guess a physician sounded more impressive,"_ Tiffany had shrugged at the time.

It was all part of the university's new "You of-" recruitment campaign. The posters were all over town, and each in the series featured a different U of G star student - their football quarterback, their student union president - and a slogan speaking to their particular talent. _'U of Athletics', 'U of Leadership', 'U of Arts'_ and all that crap. High schoolers were supposed to fawn over the posters and think 'ooh, I can be like 'U' too! Sign me up!'

 _What garbage,_ Audrey scowled.

But her cynicism ended whenever she glanced at one of Tiffany's posters. Cheerleading captain, first-class honours student and volunteer extraordinaire, her friend's slogan read ' _U of Excellence'_ , and Audrey would personally bitch-slap the first troll who argued otherwise.

"Y'see? That's the girl you should be hanging around with."

"But… only you can see me, Master."

Fucking hell, how did this kid manage to make her eyes so big and sad at the same time? Audrey tore at her hair, trying to shield herself from those cuteness-beams.

"All right, here's the deal: until I figure what the hell's wrong with me, you can stick around. You're my attack cat, okay?" In twenty-two years, she'd never before been accosted by a shadow monster. It stood to reason that if she could 'switch off' this weirdo-vision they'd leave her alone again, right?

She'd delivered the news as bluntly as possible, but it still made the cat-girl beam like she was about to shit rainbows. Audrey gagged as the walking hairball dive-tackled her lap.

"Yaay! Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! Momo's gonna be the bestest kitty ever, you'll see!"

Audrey promptly pushed her off. "Ugh, paws off the dress, hairball! Now follow me!"

"Nyaa? Where're we going now, Master?"

"To get some answers, duh! But first I've gotta fix my make-up."

Unlike the common plebs, Audrey actually knew an expert on all things bizarre and otherworldly, someone who would definitely know what was up with her and this cat-girl. _And if my luck finally balances out, I'll catch her all alone._

The thought both thrilled and terrified her.

* * *

Nikki's apartment wasn't too far from campus and the coffee shop, but the tension in Audrey's chest made the walk over feel like an eternity. She kept pausing to double-check her hair in passing windows, or to make sure her dress was smooth. God, If only she could smooth away the butterflies crowding her stomach. There could be no room for imperfections, not with the person she'd be visiting.

At the front lobby, Audrey buzzed the intercom the same way she'd rip off a bandage - quickly and with eyes shut. A minute passed, and she jabbed the button again. _C'mon, pick up already!_ The butterflies swirling through her stomach were unbearable. Finally, the line clicked.

" _Mmrrr….? Ta cho chuwan?_ "

It was four in the afternoon, but the groggy speaker groaned like it was four in the morning. Audrey cleared her throat and forced her voice to blaze with swagger.

"Hey bitch, it's Audrey. Gonna let me up?"

" _Ohh-dree?_ _Ta cho –"_ The sleepy voice paused and flipped to a mangled English. " _Ah mean,_ _whaat yu wan?_ "

"I need to talk, is that okay?"

" _Taalk? … Mmh, yes. Okay. Wan meenute."_

Audrey rolled her eyes. "And will you put on that translator collar? I no speaky space-talk, remember?"

A dainty giggle, and now the smooth, feminine voice was a language savant. "My apologies. Please come up right away."

The door lock clicked, and Audrey let herself in.

* * *

Her red eyes surveyed Nikki's little hovel, dimly lit and humming with the din of air conditioners. A row of black towers against the far wall piped in a constant stream of cold air and prickled her skin with goosebumps. _Like walking into a fridge,_ Audrey grimaced. Even Momo shivered over the temperature drop.

She tried flicking the light switch but the bulbs were already burning purple energy. Right, Nikki had replaced most of her fluorescent tubes with black lights, the better to keep the décor dark and cozy for her nocturnal roommate. Said host announced herself with a muffled yawn.

"Pardon my appearance. I am still unused to your species' waking cycles."

The bedroom door creaked open, and Audrey stifled a sharp inhale. Celeste Luvendass was baggy-eyed, sporting crumpled bed head, and she was practically naked.

Celeste's sleep-deprived hands fumbled with the sash of her night robe - a gently glowing white satin, its hem barely brushed her thighs, and its thin fabric did nothing to hide the wicked curves of her body. After a moment's struggle, Celeste gave up and stretched in a long yawn, letting the robe flop open. Only a tight, cream-coloured thong preserved her modesty, while a low-cut camisole with spaghetti straps struggled to cup her heavy breasts.

"Umm, naw, it's cool," Audrey shrugged, while her heart rammed against her chest in a totally uncool fashion. _You don't even try and you look amazing!_

Like a shy preschooler, Momo peered from behind the safety of Audrey's legs. "Master, why's her skin blue?"

"Because she's an alien, dumbass. Get with the program!"

Audrey breathed in Celeste's weirdness like an exotic perfume: blue-skinned and silver-haired, with legs that clopped about on cloven hooves and ears that sprouted curly goat horns. A Norai from the planet Tendricide, an intergalactic bounty hunter from beyond the stars, and _holy shit, she was standing right there in the laciest underwear ever!_

Celeste seemed too exhausted to register Audrey's naked admiration. "How can I be of assistance, Audrey?"

"Huh? Oh, I need you to tell me what the hell this thing is." The alien's puzzlement grew as Audrey nudged the timid cat-girl out from behind her legs.

"This is one of your domesticated species, yes? A cat?"

It was the weirdest thing ever, watching Celeste pick up Momo. When Audrey snuck a glance through her shot glass, the alien hunter looked perfectly normal scooping up a squirming kitten for inspection. Without the lens, Celeste was holding up a full-sized human girl under the shoulders, and Momo was giggling like this was a game. _So even an alien can't see her._

"She's not a cat, that's just what she looks like. It's a disguise or something. Look, ever since last night I've been seeing weird shit that shouldn't be there: dragons, monsters – this fucker."

"Hallucinations?" Celeste offered.

"I'm not going crazy! Look, don't you have some space gadget that can tell me what she really is?"

Celeste sighed as she deposited Momo on the hardwood floor for a chin scratching. "I do possess some rudimentary medical scanners, but they are not equipped to diagnose Earth physiology. Your species, your planet has never been studied by the greater galaxy."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you: she's _not_ normal, and there's no way in hell she can't be from this planet! I swear to God you'll find some E.T. shit inside her. So can you please just shove a probe up her ass or something?"

The cat-girl's ears stiffened, and Momo was suddenly very eager to wriggle out of Celeste's grasp.

Celeste rubbed at her eyes, probably wondering if this was a mad dream she'd woken into, but she didn't refuse. "Very well. I am in your debt for all you did to assist me in rescuing Nicole."

Audrey winced. Like she needed reminders of the night Nikki had been space-napped by an alien dinosaur and she'd played emergency chauffer for Celeste. It was awkward enough watching the alien woman's hand drift over her injuries: the waxy blaster scar ripped across her cheek, the off-white plastic of her prosthetic ear, and the blackened stump of her once-proud horn.

All these months and it still hadn't grown back. Audrey wasn't bold enough to ask if it ever would.

Audrey ordered Momo to stay put, while Celeste pulled out some equipment that looked like a tablet and two ping pong racquets. The Norai waved her scanning instruments around the cat-girl's trembling body, who discovered she was needlessly clamping her hands over her bottom. Celeste's tech was one-hundred percent non-invasive.

"I'm transmitting the data to my ship's cognition. There will be a slight delay."

While Celeste strapped on a pair of space-gloves and summoned holographic screens into the air, Audrey's eyes drifted skyward. She frowned.

"Hey, you two redecorate the ceiling?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Audrey coughed. _Just that you've got a carpet of bugs crawling over your heads._

Nikki's ceiling was alive and rippling with the flicker of thin wings and the pitter-patter of tiny insect legs. Butterflies – Audrey didn't know what else to call the delicate little creepers, part insect, part flower; white and delicate as milk chocolate and clinging upside-down to the stucco ceiling. Their papery wings were bubble-gum pink and folded down into points, so that each one appeared to be carrying a rosebud on its back.

"Flutterflies!" Momo gasped as though she beheld a rainbow. "Master, Momo's never seen so many all t'gether! Misses-Lady-Celeste must have somebody she really-really likes! Flutterflies only come around people who have special somebodies!"

 _Special somebody, huh?_ Audrey didn't really get it, but even the invisible monster world was rooting for Team Nikki. _Lovely._

While Celeste tapped away at her holographic keypads, Momo scampered off to explore, leaving Audrey totally alone with the alien woman in her skimpy lingerie. Her throat grew dry. _Fuck, why can't my English prof assign me an essay on how awesome you are?_ She'd hit the ten-thousand word requirement and then some!

Celeste was stacked – perfectly round, perfectly perky tits; the widest, most hypnotic ass ever; not to mention arms and legs firm with muscle and scar tissue. A perfect ratio of 'sexy' and 'badass', she could be greasy from repairing her ship's engine and still look fabulous; she could shoot down a charging animal without breaking a sweat. Best of all, she was a trained soldier who could effortlessly kick the ass of any guy who so much as looked at her funny.

And now she and Audrey were finally alone. A nervous shiver ran across the human girl's spine. _This is my chance._

"So, um … super cool that you could come clubbing the other night."

"You departed quite suddenly," Celeste noted. "Nicole and I were concerned."

Celeste had been worried for her? Audrey beamed as she chalked up a point for herself. "Jeez, don't get your panties in a bunch! Look, I ran into this hot-ass Italian guy and went back to his place for the night. Not to brag or anything, but this guy's dick was _massive_. Once he bent me over and got going, I must've cum five times in a row. Shit, I could barely stand this morning!"

Audrey paused for her high-fives, but where Miss Yumi would have been squealing for details, Celeste merely nodded. "I see. Nicole and I also mated last night. It was a most enjoyable evening."

Audrey's nails stabbed at her palms.

 _"_ Ugh _,_ what the fuck, Celeste? You think I really need to picture Nik and her saggy ass flopping around in bed? Not supposed to talk about that shit here on Earth, okay?"

Celeste's sleep deprived brain seemed genuinely puzzled. "Oh. I apologize. You've repeatedly described each of your coital encounters, so I assumed - Well, no matter."

While Celeste returned to her holo-typing, Audrey cursed her clumsiness. What was it Miss Yumi said? _Get her to teach me something?_

"Hey, Celeste, when you're in space, how do you tell someone they're a real shithead?"

" _Kaba._ " The Norai didn't even look away from her screens. "For extreme dislike, the 'S' prefix is attached. _S'kaba._ "

"Mmm." Audrey sauntered closer, and bent over into Celeste's ear. " _S'kaaaaaba,_ " she whispered in her sexiest voice.

"Correct, although you need not draw out the vowel sound."

Again, glued to her screens! Shit, this wasn't working. Audrey scrambled her brain for another topic, but her eyes kept drifting to Celeste and her long, blue, bare –

"Hey, how do you shave your legs in outer space, anyway?" That earned her an odd glance. "I mean, just wondering. They're nice. Your legs, I mean."

"I utilize a hand-held sonic laser calibrated for removing hair follicles."

"A laser? No shit! Me, I just use a straight razor. Does the trick just as good, I'll bet."

"Mmh."

 _Dammit, take a hint already!_ Audrey swallowed and stepped it up a notch.

"Betcha mine are nicer than yours." While Celeste immersed herself in typing, Audrey pulled up a chair and sat across from the alien woman. She pointed her bare legs towards the Norai, wiggling her toes so that one after the other her shoes slipped off her heels. She let them dangle suggestively before flicking one to the floor. A quick kick sent its partner shoe clattering, leaving her naked from her toes to her thighs.

"You do seem very fashion conscious," Celeste idly agreed.

Audrey's nails dug white lines across her thighs as she gathered her courage.

"Wanna feel mine?"

Celeste's fingers slipped. Red error messages blanketed her holograms.

"Pardon?"

"My legs. C'mon, give 'em a feel." Her heart was pounding in her ears, but she had Celeste's attention. She couldn't stop now. "What? Earth girls compare bods all the time."

Celeste just frowned at her, a puzzled expression screwed into her narrowed eyes. Audrey could sense that alien brain clocking overtime in an attempt to decipher the appropriateness of this Earthling ritual. She just gave a small smile and poked Celeste's knee with her toes, urging her on.

Rolling her eyes, Celeste gave her shin a cursory rub, like she was sampling a rug in a shop. "Yes, quite nice." It was all business to the alien, but to Audrey, the touch was pure bliss. She snatched Celeste's wrist and held it to her skin.

"You can feel some more, y'know." Grinning softly, she guided Celeste's hand up her calf, trying to stoke the warmth ignited by Nikki's girlfriend.

Nikki.

Audrey jerked back quickly, cheeks aflame. "Or not. Whatever."

Celeste gave her another hazy stare, then resumed her work. "They are remarkably smooth," she observed. It was a small relief she failed to observe the horror racing through Audrey's brain.

 _Fuck, what am I doing?_ This was Nikki's girlfriend! Celeste meant the world to her friend.

And yet …

"Hey, next time you shave I should show you how Earth girls do it."

That earned her a chuckle. "Appreciative; however, I groom my body hair as I shower."

"So?"

Now that garnered her a full-on look. Audrey flashed her most inviting eyes.

"We're both girls here. No big deal, right?"

Celeste said nothing. She didn't have to say anything; Audrey heard the low, trilling purr bubble from the Norai's throat. Celeste coughed quickly to cover it up, but it was there: her species' version of a happy little shiver.

 _She … she wants it?_

So of course the damn cat had to scamper into the room and wreck the moment.

"At the door! Momo hears somebody!" Along the ceiling, the flutterflies mirrored her excitement: skittering and repositioning as the lock clicked, the door creaked and -

" _Kos-kan, Celeste! Ashi-_ Audrey? What're you doing here?"

Thanks to her cat-girl early warning system, Audrey had shuffled back a safe distance from Celeste, but the fact remained that she was alone and uninvited, while Nikki's lover paraded around in alien lingerie. Only practiced reflex allowed Audrey to fasten on her calm, 'don't give a shit' face.

"S'up, Nik. I needed to talk to Smurfette."

She could see Nikki gearing up to give her an earful, but Celeste defused the entire showdown. She was on her hooves in a heartbeat, drawn to her human lover as though by magnetic lines. Nikki wobbled as she was pulled into Celeste's full-throated kiss.

A collective _poof_ exploded from the ceiling - the flutterflies unfurling their rosebud wings towards the kissing pair. A moment ago, they'd been skittering in overdrive, jostling for front-row positions like crazed fanboys at a rock concert. Now, they were still and reverently silent, a field of upside-down flowers angling their petals to capture the warmth radiating from the lover's embrace.

Momo _aww_ -ed at the spectacle, but Audrey only clenched a fist as Nikki and Celeste's love made a thousand pale-pink roses blossom on command.

" _Kos kan, Chiletto._ You've returned ahead of schedule this cycle."

"Manager let me off early," the bluenette stuttered, still punch-drunk from the deep kiss. She had no such warmth to spare Audrey. "You could've texted me, let me know you were coming."

"Oops, must've slipped my mind. Sucks when your friends keep you out of the loop, doesn't it? Gonna tell me what the hell happened to Tiff?"

Nikki rolled her eyes. "Don't get bitchy with me, okay? It's none of your business."

"Out with it, Ann-Marie!"

Audrey's outburst sent the flutterflies quivering. The quickest managed to shut their roses in time, but those closest to her fury dropped to the floor, dead from shock. The sight of tumbling rose petals stunned Audrey and Momo alike.

"Master... they don't like angry people."

Across the room, Nikki grumbled to herself, but Celeste urged her to share.

"Look, I was visiting with Miss Jessie Tuesday night, helping with her computer when Tiffany called up her mom. I wasn't trying to snoop or anything, but her voice was so loud, I … kinda overheard."

"And?"

"I dunno. It sounded like she'd been babysitting, and I guess there'd been some sort of accident. I think the kid she was looking after got hurt or something, and Tiffany was taking it pretty badly. ' _I fucked up, mom.'_ Her words exactly."

Audrey's stomach grew cold. Squeaky-clean Tiff cringed at using 'hell' or 'damn'; what nightmare had unfolded that she descended straight to the mother-trucking F-word?

"Your companion was quite upset," Celeste remarked. "When she discovered that her conversation had been overheard, she pleaded with Nicole not to repeat the information."

"So you went home and told your fuck buddy? Real nice, Nik."

The bluenette gave a rose-wilting glare of her own that showered Audrey in dead bugs.

" _Don't._ Just don't go there. Besides, that wasn't what Tiffany asked me. It was one thing, and she made me promise."

"Promise what?"

" _Don't tell Audrey._ "

Cold. No black shadow creature stood in the room, but Audrey's bones felt every bit as cold and forsaken.

"Liar!" she snapped. "Why'd Tiff be keeping shit from me?"

"I dunno, maybe because she thought you'd go blabbing to everyone?"

"Like hell I would." Audrey paced about restlessly. It was all she could do to keep up her fiery masquerade. _We made a promise that night,_ she thought. _No secrets, no bullshit._ Why was her friend turning her back on her?

"Look, Tiffany's taking some time off to sort herself out, or something. When she's ready, she'll call us, so let's just give her some space, okay?"

"Whatever! Let the baby cry in the corner."

 _Why're you giving up on me, Tiffany Maye?_

As if sensing her inner turmoil, Nikki coughed and changed topics. "What's with the cat?"

"Audrey believes it to be an extraterrestrial lifeform capable of concealing its true presence." Celeste's explanation seemed to trigger a silent alarm within her lover. In the blink of an eye, Nikki broke down into all all-out nerd-girl paranoia.

"Extraterrest - _Does it smell like sugar?"_ Her panicky voice jumped an octave. "Oh shit, Celeste - did you touch it with the iron filings to see if it burns? Omigod, did you put it in a ring of salt to see if it can get out? _Pa na isho,_ don't tell me it smells like sugar!"

" _Mugunon, Chiletto._ " Celeste rubbed the bluenette's shoulder and whispered assurances in her space language. " _Choshi dan azen."_

What happened next nearly broke Audrey's brain: Nikki replied in Celeste's same language.

" _Prip-pri,"_ Nikki hyperventilated apologetically. She sucked in her breath and added, _"Ashi … te shopan dendan."_

" _Na cupidaemons don asaroizu ashi kara cho,"_ Celeste assured her.

 _"Ashi washi,"_ Nikki nodded back quietly, breathing a sigh of relief. A wicked smirk licked her lips as she stood on tiptoe and whispered, " _Ashi yoku cho rokobi t'ashi sezara."_

Audrey could only assume that last bit had been something X-rated, because Celeste's eyebrow cocked and her throat started purring like a motorboat. Nikki grinned viciously as she was swept into another hungry embrace, lips smacking in quick, wanton kisses. Momo giggled and " _eww_ "-ed at the grown up display, while on the ceiling, hundreds of rosebud wings snapped open-shut over and over – a rousing applause to the star-crossed lovers.

Bile rose in Audrey's throat.

"God, you're a pervert, Nik. Hey Celeste, I still need some help here!" She was ready to throw a shoe at the show-offs, but Celeste disentangled herself in time.

"Ah yes. The scan report is complete. My equipment has detected no abnormalities in your animal companion. It matches no known species within the Galactic Confederacy. A mere Earth feline, nothing more."

Nikki scoffed. "I told you that shit makes you hallucinate."

"However," Celeste continued, "your described experience of seeing unseen or distorted creatures caused me to recall a certain piece of galactic folklore."

"What, like an alien fairy tale?"

Nikki whispered a translation and Celeste nodded affirmative. "The story relates to an ancient civilization on the _Shen'to_ homeworld. They are what you would call … 'bird people', Audrey. According to legend, there once existed a Shen'to religious order – a ministry of priestesses who were said to possess a 'second sight' that allowed them to observe the existence of _korubai."_

"Invisible monsters," Nikki translated. "They're the ones who could see the love fairies too, right?"

"Correct, Nicole. It is said that this order used their supernatural abilities to combat these unseen monstrosities, and to purge them from existence. In exchange for offerings to their temple, naturally."

 _Lovely, alien exorcists for hire_. "Umm, okay, but what's that got to do with me? And what's so god-damn funny, _Nicole_?" Nikki was in stitches, trying to hold back her sudden sniggering.

"Nothing," the watery-eyed nerd gasped. "It's just … Celeste told me this story before, and … those priestesses with the second sight? They were all _vibara_. It means _pure maidens._ "

When Audrey only gave her the stink-eye, the nerdette sighed and spelled it out clearly.

"They were _virgins_."

Audrey's stomach dropped. Nikki laughed again, and even Celeste couldn't keep a small giggle from smirking past her lips.

"Master?" Momo nudged at her leg, sensing a disturbance.

 _A disturbance,_ Audrey laughed from a small corner of her mind, a part that wasn't consumed by ruinous screaming. She preferred the term _traitorous back-stabbing._ Celeste, perfect Celeste, had just laughed at her – the untouched loser. Suddenly Tiffany's plan of retreating from the world didn't seem so ludicrous. She was ruined.

But like any worthy prima donna, Audrey knew the show had to go on.

"Oh ha-ha, laugh it up, you fags! Like you're ones to talk – all that licking and fingering you do doesn't count for shit, y'know! I've … I've been with plenty of guys! Maybe I've just never taken it up the vag! Y'ever think about that, huh?"

Nikki was in an all-out laugh riot, but Celeste was doing her best to contain herself. "Audrey, it is –"

"Oh, shut up!" She spun on the alien, shooting a finger at Momo as she spoke. "So if I pop my cherry, she 'pops' out of my sight, is that it? Fine then. Just watch me – I'll be sending you both dick pics of all the fuckable guys I find tonight! I'll have dicks lining up the block to nail me, you'll see! Momo – we're leaving!"

She slammed the door on her way out and made a show of stomping down the hallway as loud as she could. Halfway down the hall, Momo puzzled as Audrey stopped, slipped out of her heels and tiptoed back.

"Master?"

"Shh! Shut the fuck up."

Ever so carefully, Audrey pressed her ear to Nikki's door and listened.

"-shouldn't antagonize her like that, Nicole. She's likely to do something reckless now."

"Reckless? Like, I dunno, letting a possible love fairy spy waltz right into our apartment and see you? What if she's right, and that cat is something weird? What if she's working for that goddess? What if she knows that you're here and–"

A muffled sob choked through the door. The quiet clop of hooves and the rustle of arms embracing quieted Nikki's crying.

"I don't wanna lose you, Celeste."

"Shh. I am here, Chiletto. I will always be here."

Audrey listened onward, but only the gentle stroking of hands emerged. She imagined Nikki, enveloped in Celeste's arms, cheek pressed close to the Norai's breast as the taller woman rubbed soothing circles along her back.

A sudden yawn broke the moment. Celeste cleared her throat. "I apologize, Chiletto. Audrey's visitation woke me far too early."

"No, it's cool. You should go back to bed. I just -" Nikki took three or four steadying breaths. "Can I sleep with you? I just … wanna hold you a bit more, if that's okay?"

Another eager purr rumbled from Celeste's throat. "Not with those clothes on."

Nikki's breath hitched, and Audrey had to squeeze her cheek against the door to make out what followed: the rustle of a thin robe slipping to the floor. The daring whisper of hands on fabric. Nikki's nervous giggle as buttons were snapped and zippers tugged open.

"Mmm, I thought my Valkyrie was all tired out."

A smack of lips. A heavy growl.

"You always have a way of arousing me, Chiletto."

" _Ashi iko cho, Celeste._ "

"I love you so much, my precious Nicole."

A bulky sweater thumping against the floor. The flick of elastic straps from shoulders. A shudder of breath accompanied by the staccato rhythm of lips pecking lips, growing every second in tempo and intensity. Audrey listened to the intimate duet – two people holding each another, exploring each other; adorning one another's bodies with the tenderest of kisses.

She reared back and kicked the door hard. Momo was on her heels as she ran down the hall.

She'd show them. She'd show them all! She was going to stamp out this nightmarish hallucination world all by herself!

 _Virgin priestesses, huh? Well say goodbye V-card, and goodbye Momo!_ By the end of tonight she'd fuck five – no, _ten_ different guys, and just before each of those throbbing, foot-long dicks made her cum, she'd dial Nikki so the little brat could listen to the filthy, screaming ecstasy that she and her alien dyke were missing out on!

Audrey nodded, arching her back and stomping her feet so that Momo would see her firm commitment.

Only her traitorous hands betrayed a nervous tremble.


	4. Cat's out of the Bag

Lusties Nightclub – Glenberry's premier party spot. With loud music, lax security and cheap beer, it was the perfect lure for horny guys looking to get some. The perfect hook-up site for a young girl frantic to lose her virginity.

Audrey knew the club intimately; she'd spent countless Friday nights trawling the dance floor for boys with too much money and too little brain, sponging up their free drinks and attention. This time, she just had to follow through with her flirtations and actually let the guys take her home.

 _I can do this,_ she told herself. _I know every fucking trick in the book._ Every suggestive pose, every dirty gesture; she knew exactly how to make the boys thirsty for more of what she had.

So she could only roll her eyes at the clueless, dumb fucks she was fishing up tonight.

"I said, _wanna fuck?_ "

"This is a joke, right? I'm being filmed or something?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

"You look like you're about to go blue from hypothermia. Your arms always shake like that?"

Audrey glanced down and clenched her trembling hands. "I'm not fucking scared! I'm just high, that's all! On cocaine! Now c'mon, let's fuck!"

"Yeah, no thanks. Pass."

"Oh, screw you, ass-hat! I don't need your shit!" A hard shove, a swig of her drink and it was on to the next. "Hey – yeah, you with the hat! Wanna fuck?"

"Huh? You high, _bella_?"

 _Argh!_ What was with these losers and their questions? Had their brains all gone as limp as their dicks?

"Intercourse, you asshole! I need some cock and I need it now! So, you gonna be the big man who gives it to me?"

Clearly not, the limp-dick was already backing off like she was a psycho-bitch, but one of his buddies, a charming fat-ass with a neck beard, decided he had a shot. Audrey recoiled as a greasy palm grabbed her around the waist.

"Hey, if you're putting out, I'll put mine in-OW!" Neck-beard clutched at his face. Audrey was no cat-girl, but her nails lashed out just as viciously as Momo's.

"Don't _touch_ me! _Nobody_ touches me!" Fuck, she was starting to shake again. _Thought I was past this shit,_ she winced as her mind worked double-time to force back memories of a dark night at a sleazy fraternity…

She needed to get out, get some breathing room fast.

The smoker's patio! Audrey couldn't shove her way through the crowds fast enough. She slammed the door behind her and went for her cigs. None of that pussy-ass pot, she needed the real stuff. Sweet nicotine flooded her lungs. _Ahhh…_

"Master?"

"GAAH, what the fuck? I told you to stay home!" And yet there was Momo – crouched at her side, starring up with amber eyes that looked so unbearably sad and glassy under the night sky. The kitty cat had no innocent illusions about what her master was up to.

"You're tryin' t'make Momo disappear."

"No shit, Sherlock! Fuck, can't I get a minute's peace?" Audrey spun around and stomped off, only to run into Momo three steps away, stinking of sulfur and still in that same pleading crouch. Seriously, how was she doing this disappear/reappear bullshit?

"Master, Momo's scared for you. Your eysies are turning black, an' your lips look all puffy."

"Eyeliner, lipstick!" Audrey growled as her fingers shot to her layered make-up.

"But how'd your boobies get so super-big?"

"Argh, it's a padded bra, you retard! Big lips, big tits! This is what guys want, and I'm more than happy to give it to them!"

"You don't look happy, Master."

In her anger, Audrey didn't notice the ash from her cigarette until it dropped onto her finger. "Fuck! See what you made me do? I've had it up to here with your precious shit, you little brat! I'm getting laid, and I'm never gonna see you again, so why don't you kindly do me a favor and scram!"

The tears in Momo's eyes were overwhelming, but she was an obedient kitten. Her blue kimono whipped past Audrey as she ran for the fence and vaulted over, a mewling sob in her throat. Audrey slumped down and held her aching head.

The cat was right, of course. Flipping open her compact revealed just how hideous and caked-on her make-up looked. Raccoon-mask eyes, bloody lips and fuck, did her chest look as plastic and gross as a knockoff Barbie doll. Audrey reached down her black dress, tossed her pads across the patio and dropped her head into her knees.

No wonder the boys weren't biting - she looked like a back alley whore and they knew it.

"Course, none of this would've happened if you'd just _picked up the god-damn phone, Tiff!_ " Tiffany would've taken one look at her outfit and found the perfect, gentle words to convince her to dial down the make-up, maybe pick a colour that wasn't shitty, goth black. Tiffany always knew just what to say.

 _Every time I fuck up, she's the one who yanks me out of the fire._ Nailing that frat asshole who tried to have his way with her, helping her patch things with Nikki after the nerd came out of the closet; not to mention that whole shit-show when she'd ODed on Kasumi's pills. Tiffany was like bacon 'n eggs after a killer hangover – she made everything right again.

 _So thanks for ditching me,_ Audrey grimaced. Why the fuck did everyone have to leave her?

Her pity session was broken up when another winged draydid buzzed her head. The flying serpent scanned her briefly, and even though she stunk like a sunk who'd rolled an ash heap, the monster turned up its scaly nose at her. She could inhale all the nicotine in the world, and still the bugger wouldn't suck up any mellow vibes from her. _Even the monster world's giving up on me._

"Well fuck you too," she snorted, picking herself up, stubbing out her cigarette and dusting off her little black dress. There had to be one guy back inside who was stupid and well-endowed enough to give her a good, deep dicking, and she was going to find him and break her curse.

"Just need another drink, and I'll spot him," she told herself.

But it was a love fairy she spotted instead.

* * *

It was the light that first drew Audrey's attention – a flash of gold from the back corner of the VIP section. Against the gaudy, neon lights of the dance floor, the light looked so pure and fresh; it was like getting a blast of pure sunlight.

At first she just walked towards the light out of sheer, 'what the fuck?' confusion. Halfway across the lounge, she realized that the glow was coming from four lustrous dragonfly wings, each as tall as a standing human, and then she started pacing forward in earnest.

Wings – golden, shimmering wings! It had to be a love fairy, right? _Holy crap, I hit the jackpot! S_ he'd be laid in no time!

The fairy was slumming about in the private booths, her back turned to Audrey as she straddled the lap of some lucky bastard, his hands all over her tits and ass while their lips slobbered together. Every time the guy hit her sweet spots, the fairy buzzed her wings in a horny, little shiver.

 _Fucking hell, she's going to town on that guy!_ Nikki had ranted to her many times about how love fairies were 'perverts and degenerates', so the public make-out wasn't unexpected, but the nerd had also told her that fairies all sported crazy, neon hair and wore dresses designed to look like flower petals. Something was off about this sprite: decked out in a simple, white cocktail dress with blonde hair trailing down to her butt. Besides the wings, she looked remarkably human. _Looks a lot like Tiff, actually._ Audrey was pretty sure her friend had that exact same dress in her closet.

The guy broke their make-out for a huge gasp for air. He fanned his face, and snapped open three buttons to cool his chest. On his lap, the fairy giggled, drunk and ready for another round. Audrey watched the guy hold up his palm and gesture down to his lap. Either he wanted a blow-job or … no, he had to go piss. Reluctantly, the fairy let him scooch out of the booth and head to the john.

Audrey didn't waste a beat. "Hey, Tinkerbell! Hey, over here! I need some love advice, so –"

She stopped.

"Tiffany?"

It was like someone hit a kill switch on a Christmas display. The glow cut from the cheerleader's wings, and the thousands of bead-like particles that made her fairy limbs 'poofed' out of sight. They stared at each other, trading horrified looks.

"A-Audrey?"

That gentle voice clinched it. It was Tiffany. Drunk off her ass and making out with a random stranger, but most definitely Tiffany. " _This_ is where you've been hiding?" And what was with those wings?

The cheerleader didn't answer. She just dropped into panic mode, snatching at the leftover shooters on her table and chugging them back to destroy the evidence. "Audrey," she slurred, "what's shakin', bacon? You good? I'm good! Wanna –"

"Shut up," Audrey commanded. "You're coming with me." She didn't put up any fight when Audrey snatched her wrist and marched her to the front door. Caught and ashamed, she was little more than a scolded child. Audrey pulled her outside, and the fresh air reacted poorly with her inebriated brain. The cheerleader slumped against Audrey's shoulder.

"Shit," Audrey cursed. The taxi she'd just hailed had stopped almost half a block away, and Tiff was heavy as fuck! "Argh, c'mon, Tiff!" She scanned the sidewalk for help, and fell upon a pair of lonesome, amber eyes, sniffling from a safe distance.

"Momo! Momo, give me a hand here, will ya?"

The cat-girl sulked and turned away.

"God damn it, don't be such a bitch! _Help me,_ for fuck's sake! I – fuck, I need you, okay?"

A pointed ear perked.

"C'mon, you wanna go home with me, right? Help me, and you can stay as long as you want, okay?"

"Momo can help, Master!" A whiff of sulfur and a flash of amber eyes announced Momo's presence at her side. With a cheery _'hup'_ , Momo pushed herself onto two legs, found her balance and grabbed Tiffany's free shoulder to ease the load. Audrey could only imagine how weird they must have looked to the taxi driver who could only see Momo's cat form.

"Master is this your friend from the picture? The nice lady? She looks all sick-icky."

"No shit," Audrey grunted as they stuffed the cheerleader into the back of the cab, "and I'm gonna find out why."

* * *

Tiffany rented the top floor of an old couple's rooming house. One look at the roof told Audrey that behind Miss Cheerleader's drunken giggles, something seriously fucked up was going down. Stilt-legged cawglers cloaked the roof in their oily, black feathers. More still were bobbing along the front lawn like pink flamingos on a fortieth birthday. The instant the freakish birds saw Tiffany, their serrated saw-beaks started " _caw-caw"-_ ing overtime. Only Momo's bodyguard hissing and clawing kept Tiffany from getting mobbed by the stress-seeking birds.

Inside, Audrey found the remains of an honours student's week-long bender: dirty clothes piled _next to_ the laundry hamper (whites and colours), ramen noodle packs stacked by the hot plate (organized by flavor), and cans of hard lemonade lined neatly on the desk and bedside table (with pop tabs removed for charity).

 _Fucking hell,_ even when she was a train wreck, Tiffany couldn't stop being so squeaky clean.

The houseplant on her bureau was wilted and brown, and when Audrey stepped over to inspect it, she jumped back with a yelp: a stray bib-bobber groaned and glanced up at her. _How the hell did you sneak in?_

It was harmless, though: the cartoony radish had tumbled onto its side - withered, brown and ready for a bed in an old folks' home. Audrey watched it mumble incoherently as it tried to muster the energy to rock itself upright, but just a small roll left the geriatric vegetable wheezing. There was no happiness to feed off of here.

Audrey discreetly slid the radish into the garbage bin. _Mercy kill,_ she figured, and besides, old shit freaked her out.

Tiffany had started giggling from her spot on the bed, delirious from her alcohol binge. No biggie, Audrey had a miracle cure ready. She dragged the cheerleader straight into her bathroom, thrust Tiffany's head under the shower nozzle and cranked the tap for 'cold'.

Tiffany's senses flew back in a scream.

"Master, you're killing her!" To Momo's horrified cat brain, a forced shower must have been on par with medieval torture.

"Oh she's gonna hurt a whole lot more come morning," Audrey grunted. "Wake the fuck up, Tiff!"

"I'm awake! I'm awake!" but Audrey kept her friend under until Tiffany had the coherence to push herself away and onto the floor. Sprawled next to the toilet with her hair drenched and pasted, Tiffany was an absolute wreck: her white dress bunched and beer-stained, her gaudy make-up running rivulets down her face. Audrey shut the tap, but she didn't ease off the pressure.

"Truth time!"

Panting on the floor, Tiffany's eyes flickered with violence, but Audrey stuck to her guns. "You heard me. Truth time."

"No," came the firm, sober refusal. "No, we started truth time for _you_ , Audrey Belrose! Don't you dare turn this against me!"

Audrey stamped her foot so hard she swore it would smash through the floor.

"Screw off, miss fairy matchmaker! You promised: no more bullshit, no more lies between us, and now I find out you're keeping secrets again? Yeah, that's right. Nikki coughed it up. You really think she'd keep her lips shut? Some friend you are!"

"Audrey –"

"I'm not finished!"

Audrey squatted before the waterlogged blonde, stitching their eyes together.

"I've let you in on every dirty little secret I've got. You know I'm a virgin, you know how much it freaked me when Nikki came out; you know about Celeste and the shit I've been dealing with!" Just mentioning her demons brought back the tremble in her hands. "I've been straight with you about everything! So why the fuck won't you trust me?"

The verbal onslaught was too much. Salty droplets joined the water dripping from Tiffany's crushed face.

"I didn't want you to see me like this…"

 _Shit_ , the kid was completely losing it now.

Audrey tried to keep a firm tone, but with Tiff sobbing and shuddering, all she could manage was a hoarse whisper. " _Truth time:_ what the fuck were you doing at the club, letting that prick feel you up like that?"

"I just ... needed to feel good again," Tiffany admitted shamefully. "Everything's gone so wrong this week; I finally figured, 'screw it, might as well get out and have some fun'. Let down my hair, have some drinks; hang out with someone new and ... see where things go. 'Fun' is all I've got now that I've completely ruined my life."

 _Mrrow?_ Momo had retreated to a back corner during their shouting match, but with their voices lowered, the cat-girl felt secure enough to creep forward and headbutt Tiffany's shin. The cheerleader didn't seem to care where the cat had come from, she just seized Momo around the neck and hugged her like a comfort doll.

"Let's start over," Audrey sighed. She uncapped her purse flask and offered Tiffany the first swig. "What the hell happened on this last babysitting gig? You told your mom you 'fucked up'."

Tiffany drank deeply, and when the alcohol and the kitten cuddling had settled her nerves, she took Audrey back to the beginning of her week in hell.

"Tuesday afternoon, I got a last-minute call to babysit. It was for Kyanna from the salon; you know, the one who does your hair?"

 _The one who shits all over my hair,_ Audrey auto-corrected, but she let Tiffany continue.

"Well, something came up with her mother, and she needed me to watch her little boy. Philly's barely two but he can already crawl like a maniac. You can't leave him alone for one second; this one time, he -"

"Just get to the fuck-up part." Audrey was already dealing with an incessantly cute cat-girl; she didn't need to know the life story of Cianna's little poop machine.

"It happened at the park," Tiffany began. "You know the Southern play structure, the one with the red slide? Well, the two of us were out for a walk, and I took Philip out of his stroller so he could play in the sand box. It was all going fine: we were digging a hole, he was laughing; that's when this Frisbee disc landed next to us and the barking started."

Momo's tail stiffened.

"It was some guy playing fetch with his dog. The toss went long into the sandbox, but the dog raced after it all the same. It was a Dalmatian, and of course Philly recognized it from the Disney movie, so before I knew it he was motoring towards this dog."

She paused to collect herself.

"It bit him, Audrey. Philly reached his arm out to pet it, and I don't know if the thing was nervous or angry, but this dog just snapped at his forearm and shook."

"Holy shit…"

"It wasn't a deep bite," Tiffany clarified, "but there were puncture marks, Audrey; and blood all over the sand! The owner kept apologizing all the way to the emergency room – _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry –_ but all that was going through my head was Philly. He just kept screaming, and not even the paramedics could get him to stop. He needed so many stitches, Audrey."

"Well fuck that asshole for letting his dog run loose! After you called the ambulance, I hope you sacked him in the balls good!"

"It was _the guy_ who called the ambulance, Audrey. I _froze!_ "

Tiffany took several deep breaths, hands over her head as she shrunk into the tiniest, most pathetic huddle.

"I don't know what did it – the blood, the way Philly screamed – but I froze, Audrey. I froze! I'm studying to be a nurse; I'm supposed to be helping people when they're hurt and in pain, but when someone needed me the most, I _froze._ I couldn't – do – anything!"

"Yeah, but – I mean – well, fuck; who wouldn't freeze?" The memory of a very unwanted night in a frat house was crawling up her spine again. "What did Kialla say when she found out?"

"Kyanna," Tiffany corrected sternly, "and when she came racing into the hospital, she wouldn't even look at me. ' _I trusted you. Confié en ti con mi hijo.'_ That's all she said, and then she wouldn't even give me the time of day. I was dead to her."

"And that's when you lost it."

"Audrey, the next morning my phone was screaming off the hook! All these parents calling and cancelling advance babysitting jobs! The head lifeguard at the pool called too; Audrey, they asked me not to teach any more swimming lessons until they'd _looked further into the matter._ The story got out, and now everyone thinks I did this to Philly or something!"

 _Gotta be Kyanna, mouthing off to all the other daycare dropout mommies,_ Audrey scowled. Starting rumors to get back at Tiff.

"So that's why you up and disappeared on me? Why you decided to give up, get drunk and let some random douchebag plow you? A dog bite, and a bunch of phone calls?"

"Audrey, I screwed –"

"Shut up! You're not the one who screwed up – it was that asshole with his dog! And Kyanna? Fuck her for starting those rumors! She's the same age as us and she's already saddled up with a dumb kid! Who the fuck is she to go around judging you when she's screwed up her entire life already? Fuck that bitch!"

"How can you say that? What if Zoey's right; what if I am just getting in the way…"

" _Zoey_?" Audrey's guard dog instincts flared up. What the fuck kind of rat poison had that social justice shithead been pouring into Tiffany's ear?

"There's other girls, after all," Tiffany continued. "Ones that don't have it as good as I do, and if my privilege is taking their opportunities -"

"No. No. Full stop, _no_. You are not fucking taking away anyone's opportunities, you're taking what you've earned! You think you've got it easy? Your mom was so desperate for cash that she started sucking dick on the Internet just to pay for your school! And all this, this university shit? _You did that_. You got you own jobs, found your own place and you studied like a mother-fucking boss, just so you could be the best! You are golden, Tiffany Isabella Maye, and no matter what Kyanna or Zoey tell you, this world would be a whole lot shittier place without you!"

She stopped, winded and in need of breath. Tiffany and Momo stared blankly, probably wondering who this new, raven-haired Audrey-imposter was and how she'd come up with such a heartfelt speech.

Audrey was wondering the same thing.

"Look, just … stop being so hard on yourself, okay? People screw up; fuck, I'm Queen of the Screw-Ups, what with the way I've treated you and Nik. But if I can bounce back, well… for you, it's gonna be a cake walk."

Tiffany reached over for the toilet paper, wiped her eyes and honked her nose. "You really think so?"

"Bitch, you're Little Miss _U of Excellence._ I know you're gonna be fine."

And then she startled, finding Tiffany's arms around her shoulders in a desperate hug.

"Thank you," came the whisper in Audrey's ear. "Thank you for coming after me, Audrey. I … oh, god I could have been in so much trouble if you hadn't -"

"Yeah, well… I found you." Audrey squirmed awkwardly, but finally settled in and returned the hug. Momo clapped her hands at the happy reunion. "Besides, bitchy moms and rabid dogs have got nothing on my day! I'm the one who's going out of her god-damn mind here!"

"I saw your messages. Sorry," Tiffany blushed. "Maybe you'd better start from the beginning."

* * *

She gave Tiff the rundown – her trippy freak-out on the nightclub patio, waking up with Momo in her bed; how the trip to university turned into hell in a shadowy, black handbasket. "I got Celeste to do some … research. She thinks I'm some sort of virgin priestess with magic powers. Figured if I could get some dick up my cooter, it'd cancel out this shit, take me back to normal. Picked a hell of a night to get drunk and desperate, huh?"

She felt Tiffany take her hand in a reassuring squeeze.

"So you can see magical things, your cat is really a little girl with cat ears, and there's some black shadow monster after you," Tiffany summarized. The blonde shook her head and took a deep breath. "Okay."

Audrey cocked her head. "Okay what?"

"I mean, okay, I believe you." While Audrey stared dumbfounded, Tiffany pressed on. "What's her name? Can I pet her?"

"Momo's name is Momo," the cat-girl chirped, "and you're super-good at scratchies, Misses Tiffy!"

Audrey translated: "She says you can go to town on her earsies. I mean, ears." Shit, the baby-talk was rubbing off on her. "You're taking this rather well."

"Well, it's not like I'm in a position to judge stories about invisible, magic creatures," Tiffany pointed out. "Besides, we promised we were going to be honest with each other, so I believe in you, Audrey."

They were sitting together with their backs against the bathtub, Tiffany on one side, and Momo curled up on her other. For the first time since this whole 'second sight' shitstorm had started, Audrey felt a sense of calm settling over her; a peace she hadn't felt from any amount of smokes or drinks. Yeah, she _still_ didn't have a solution for getting out of her nightmare-o-vision, but solving it didn't seem impossible anymore.

With Tiffany by her side, everything felt right.

"Hey," the blonde interrupted, "can we break so I can shower? Starting to get cold from that spray-down you gave me." Tiffany ran a hand across her low-cut dress, highlighting the gooseflesh from her collar down to her cleavage.

"Probably sore from having that guy milk your tits at the club," Audrey added. That earned her a swat, but she smirked it off.

Audrey let Tiffany gather some pajamas, and waited out in the main room while the shower ran. The place looked brighter already, she decided. Through the windows, she could still spy a cawgler or two scavenging for scraps of stress, but the flock had definitely thinned out. Over in the corner, Tiffany's trash can was hopping around to the beat of the newly revived bib-bobber. Audrey tried not to let Momo see her grin as she opened the front door and shooed out the little weed.

"You look super-duper better, Master," Momo said with a full mouth. Audrey frowned.

"What the hell're you eating, cat? Spit!"

Momo sulked, but she dutifully stuck out her tongue. "I found 'em on the bed," she explained.

It wasn't the dead bug that made Audrey scowl, but the species. Her eyes trailed from Momo's half-chewed snack to Tiffany's bedsheets, now a nesting ground to a handful of pink, love-hungry flutterflies.

 _God damn it, Tiff. You found somebody too?_

* * *

"Audrey?"

Tiffany's voice made her jump a little, like she'd been caught snooping through a private diary. Glancing over at her friend only frayed her nerves further.

"What the hell are those?"

She was pointing at the four golden dragonfly wings sprouting above Tiffany's shoulders, but the blonde misinterpreted, glancing down at her knee-length nightshirt instead. A pair of adorable, cartoon corgis were panting happily in cozy turtlenecks. The caption above read "Check 'Em Out!"

"This? Oh, I got it from my mom. They're puppies. In sweaters? You know, sweater pu- okay, maybe it is a little gross, but aren't they cute?" She paused and modeled with her hands folded at her back. "Do you like 'em?"

Audrey didn't reply. Instead, she marched up into Tiffany's face and waved her hand over the shoulder-sprouted wings. They seemed to be made of thousands of precious, glimmering fireflies, and they parted for Audrey's fingers like a curtain of beads, reforming as soon as her touch dispersed. A quick walk around confirmed that the wings weren't solid, and they weren't tearing holes through Tiffany's night shirt either. Like projections of light, they were just … there. Plain as daylight if you had the eyes to spot them, but non-existent for all intents and purposes.

"Some fluff on my back?'

"It's nothing," Audrey grunted back. "Hey, you still got those fairy pills?" The question made Tiffany recoil.

"What? No, I told you I ran out of those awful things … that night at the fraternity. Why?"

"No reason." _After-images_ , Audrey decided. The stink from her smokes followed her for hours afterwards; these phantom wings had to be something similar, a harmless magical side effect from popping all those fairy pep pills. Tiff didn't even seem to realize they were there. "Anyway, I should call a cab and get going."

Tiffany grabbed her by the wrist.

"Audrey, can you stay a bit longer? Please? I'm … kinda not ready to be alone."

"And do what, have a slumber party? You gonna braid my hair or some shit?"

Tiffany's eyes sparkled at the suggestion. "Can I? I mean, you don't mind if I comb your hair, do you? We can take turns!"

Audrey shrugged. "Hey, I'm not gonna turn up free salon service." She was still a little weirded out by the wings, but they seemed innocent enough; plus, all the combing talk had gotten the cat all bouncy and excited.

"Slumber party, yay! Master, will you comb Momo's hair too?"

 _Honestly!_ She'd have no peace from either of these kids if she refused, so Audrey arranged herself on Tiffany's bed, with her friend kneeling at her back and Momo perched attentively in front, purring happily as Audrey gave her chocolaty hair some perfunctory strokes. Tiffany giggled.

"She really likes you, Audrey."

"She's a pain in the ass, but whatever; at least she's easy to please." Really, after a few simple brush strokes, the cat-girl had already melted into a happy, napping puddle at her feet.

"You're going to keep her, right?"

"Keep her?" Audrey snorted. "I was gonna see if you wanted her."

"I'd love to. I really would, Audrey, but my landlords have a 'no pet' policy. We're probably okay for tonight," she added quickly.

"Figured you'd say that." The perfect capstone to her crappy day.

"Hey, Audrey? About what happened at the club... promise me you won't tell anyone, okay?"

"What, that you tarted yourself up like a whore, hooked up with a random guy and started riding him like a mechanical bull?" _Huh_. _Yeah, that would probably look bad on Tiff's rep._ "Chill, _I'm_ still trying to scrub that image from my brain."

"Thanks."

Sensing an opportunity to score some gossip, Audrey teased onward. "I'll bet your boyfriend would be pretty pissed if he found you with that guy."

"My -?"

"You don't have to hide it," Audrey continued, glancing at the idle flutterflies. "You've got someone on your brain; I can tell."

Tiffany's hands stiffened. "I'm not ready to talk about that, okay?"

"Killjoy. Don't tell me it's another sappy, 'pining from afar' deal?"

"They … don't know how I feel. Not yet."

"Lame! Well, got a pic at least? He a looker?"

"They're … something," Tiffany admitted softly. The hands in Audrey's hair eased slightly. "Mm. Yeah, they're definitely a ten…"

 _They?_ Well, _they_ certainly had a way of putting a dreamy smile on Tiff's face. Noticing Audrey's stare, the cheerleader coughed quickly. "Hey, so you went to the club with Nikki and Celeste. How was that?"

 _Fucking hell, what a pivot!_ "Absolute shit. I ended up ogling Miss tall, hot 'n leggy all night. Christ, I … I went over to their place today, Tiff, and I … started putting the moves on Celeste…"

Tiffany gave a weary exhale. "Audrey…"

She slapped her hands over her face, partly to hide, partly to hurt herself. "I don't know what's wrong with me, Tiff. It's not like I'm a dyke or anything. I just –"

Tiffany gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. "You can't stop thinking about her. I know."

 _What do you know?_ Audrey scowled, but Tiff was already continuing.

"Maybe you're just learning new things about the kinds of people you like. Zoey would say you're _discovering a new facet of your sexual identity._ Doesn't that sound neat?"

"Please don't bring up princess snowflake, okay?" Why was Tiff suddenly so eager to gobble down Zoey's poison pills, anyway?

"Well, I'm just saying that …" She lowered her brush and frowned. "I don't think you should be ashamed about being attracted to another girl. People are people, right?"

"I guess."

"And really, who could blame you? I mean, Celeste is this rock-star Australian supermodel! She's looks amazing, she's got that awesome white hair, and she's a … bail bondsman? I don't really get her job, but she totally kicks butt! I mean, it's kinda not right that you're crushing on Nikki's girlfriend, but you've got totally high standards for women, is what I'm saying."

"Huh, never thought of it that way." She kinda liked the idea, though. Audrey Belrose wasn't going to settle for any dumpy old glass of water, no ma'am. It was champagne and caviar all the way, baby, and Celeste was the finest bottle in the house! "Shit, how do you figure out just what to say, Tiff?"

"I guess you bring out the best in me, Audrey. I just wish I could figure out these tangles! You really did a number on your hair today."

"Stress knots. Just keep doing what you're doing." Tiffany's brushstrokes felt just as magical as her words. Unlike that bitch Kyanna, Tiff actually knew how to hold her hair to keep the comb from tugging, how to glide those teeth through her hair as cleanly as a knife through hot butter. Audrey closed her eyes, relishing the soothing warmth Tiffany's hands massaged deep into her scalp.

"Mm, keep it up, blondie. You should get paid for this."

"As long as you're happy, that's enough," Tiffany smiled back.

Audrey sighed deeply, trying to remember when she'd last felt this at ease, when a brief buzzing noise stirred her from her rest.

She opened her eyes. Directly across from the bed, her reflection stared back from Tiffany's vanity mirror. With tangled black hair and a dumpy, black dress, she looked like an oily seagull against Tiffany's blonde angel locks. She watched her friend draw the brush through her greasy hair, and the wings on Tiffany's back buzzed.

Audrey froze. Tiffany didn't seem to notice; she hummed to herself as she stroked Audrey's hair, and with every caress, the wings on her back shivered and hummed in reply.

"So," Tiffany smiled, "you said that Momo's actually a cat-girl, and there's this shadow thing too. What else can you see?"

Audrey averted her eyes from the mirror. "Y'know … stuff. Monsters and weird plants. Some of them are just disguised as regular animals; they're actually different underneath."

Another eager buzz of the fairy wings. "Do other people look different?"

"Some," Audrey croaked.

The wings were impossible to ignore, sliding higher from their resting position until they were fully erect above Tiffany's head. They sparkled in the lamplight like tapestries of golden beads. Audrey swallowed carefully and focused only on Tiffany's voice.

"I think this eye power sounds totally neat," Tiffany continued. "It's like you can see things how they really are – like there's no more secrets anymore!"

 _It's shit, and I want it to stop._

Audrey's heart was lodged in her throat. Tiffany's bed, so soft and spacious, now felt cold and dangerous. The air seemed to grow thin and scarce. She felt trapped, caged inside a velvet prison, and worse yet, now the flutterflies were taking notice! All of Tiffany's wing purrs had roused them from hibernation. The pink bugs were padding across the bedspread, studying Tiffany as she giggled and hummed and ran her comb through Audrey's hair.

The rose petals on their backs started twitching.

"Hey, you're starting to look tense there."

"I'm fine," Audrey gasped. All of her brainpower was focused on the ring of flutterflies, willing them not to move, begging them not to peel open their rose wings any further. It was a placeholder reply, and Tiffany knew it.

"Liar," she teased, setting down her comb. The hands she lowered onto Audrey's shoulders felt cold as serpent coils. "Hey, Debbie from my cheer squad's studying physiotherapy, and she showed us some cool moves." Tiffany's lightly puttering wings kicked into a permanent buzz as she lowered her lips to whisper in Audrey's ear.

"Can I give you a back rub?"

Audrey vaulted off the bed. She was across the room in a heartbeat, startling Momo and scattering the flutterflies into a pink petal storm. Tiffany's wings went rigid with shock.

"Audrey?"

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Her heartbeat was a hammer, her blood a churning river, and still Tiffany had the gall to play dumb with her.

"Another panic attack? Here, Audrey let me –"

"Don't fucking come near me!" Dammit, the flutterflies had followed her across the room! They were perching in her hair, clinging like burrs as they angled their open wings to soak up Tiffany's -

"Is this some fucking joke? We're _friends_ , Tiff, so why the fuck are you –? Are you getting off on this?"

"What?" Tiffany's wings hid guiltily behind her back. "No, Audrey, listen –"

"You are, aren't you? Don't fucking lie, I saw you _buzzing!_ "

" _Buzzing?_ "

"Just like in the club, when you were going at it with that guy! You buzz whenever you get all hot and horny! Is this how you get off? Sniffing and touching other people's hair?"

Tiffany opened her mouth; Audrey didn't allow her a single word.

"It has to be," the diva ranted to herself. "Why else would you be hiding this new _someone_ you like, or taking sex-ed advice from that lunatic, Zoey? Why else would you get all excited being … being near -?"

Audrey stopped, locking eyes with the blonde girl. Against her ugly mudslinging, Tiffany stood silent and defenseless in her night shirt, wringing her hands like a nervous schoolgirl. The remaining flutterflies hovered about Tiffany's shoulders, every bit as pink and pure and innocent as the girl before Audrey.

"Maybe … maybe I like being with you, Audrey."

Audrey clamped a palm over her mouth, feeling her stomach heave.

"Oh Christ, this is so fucked up…"

"Audrey, let's talk, okay?"

"NO! No, I am fucking done here; I'm … I'm not a dyke!"

"Neither am I."

"Then why're you … No. Don't you ever come near me again, you sick, perverted fuck! I am through with you!"

Momo barely had time to scamper through the door before Audrey slammed it shut and ran from the house. She could hear Tiffany throw the door open, hear her running and shouting - "Audrey!" - but a backwards glance at those firefly wings, a last glimpse of the flutterfly halo dancing around Tiffany's head, it killed her nerve.

Audrey didn't stop running until she found a back alley dumpster to hide behind. Momo sat and watched as she panted up lung-fuls of terrified air.

"Master?"

"Did you see that?" Audrey hyperventilated. The flutterflies were still in her hair. Christ, she had to get them out of her hair! "Did you see what she tried to do to me?"

Momo watched her snatch the invisible insects one by one, watched her shred and scatter their paper wings like so many unwanted love letters. To the cat, her panic was incomprehensible.

"Master," she spoke up in a tiny voice, "was your friend tryin' t'make you feel special?"

Audrey paused, and looked at the half-dismembered bug in her hands. _Blue eyes,_ she realized. Their insect eyes glimmered blue, just like Tiff's, and she was ripping this innocent little life to pieces like it was a beating heart in her hands.

Audrey threw away the maimed flutterfly. She crumpled herself into a ball.

"God, I'm so fucked up…"


	5. Cataclysm

When Audrey peeled back the lids of her eyes, morning sunshine bombarded her with its false promise of cheer. She was back in her bedroom, one arm sliding off the bed and her sheets tangled around her body from a night of fitful tossing.

 _I smell like cat_ , she grimaced. No big mystery as to who had dragged her home a second time.

She didn't dare move more than her eyes. Her head was full of gravel and just breathing grated on her brain, like her gray matter was being scraped against her skull. Images of Tiffany leapt to her mind: the cheerleader's tearful eyes as she called out -

Audrey crumpled that mental photograph before it could fully develop. _I just wanna sleep,_ she moaned, shutting her eyes on her so-called friend and the cruel, deceitful world.

So of course a tiny finger started poking at her cheek. "Master? Master?"

The pokes, the shoulder shakes – Audrey ignored it all. So the furry alarm clock upped her game: From across the room, Audrey heard the pad of feet – a running leap –

The cat-girl dive-bombed onto her lap. "Wakey, wakey, Master! It's morning!"

"Fuck!"

" _Mrrow?_ Are you okay, Master?"

"No, I'm not okay! Don't jump on me like that, you little shit!"

"Momo's sorry, Master but … um… oh – Momo knows! Here's a super-duper reason why you should smile: Tada!" The cat-girl waved her hands and self-gestured. "You said last night that Momo could stay fer'ever 'n ever if she helped and she did! Now we can be t'gether all the time! Isn't that … Master?"

The kitty cat prodded and nudged at her master, oblivious to the cause of Audrey's sudden, ruinous sobbing.

* * *

"Nyaa, nyaa! Playing with Master!"

Cocooned under a pile of blankets, Audrey rolled her eyes at Momo's stupid singing. To keep the kid busy, she'd tied some old pantyhose together and was swishing it along the foot of the bed like a fishing line. The nylon lure was so obviously fake but the cat-girl gleefully threw herself at the bait like it was the tail of a live mouse, nabbing it in her claws and rolling on her back while she chewed and tugged at the end. Life was a grand old game!

 _She really has no clue what a crap-sack world this is._

Scrolling through her text messages hit home just how fucked she really was. Tiffany had been calling her all night, bombarding her with voicemails until Audrey's inbox hit its limit.

Without listening, Audrey deleted every single message.

Next came the texts – banners of sad and distressed emojis decorating the parade of apologies.

 **TIFF - 12:41 am  
** _=Audrey…=_

 **12:41 am  
** _=I'm sorry=_

 **12:42 am  
** _=I'm so, so sorry=_

 **12:45 am  
** _=I shouldn't have …=_

 **12:48 am**  
 _=Please don't be mad …=_

 **12:49 am**  
 _=I wanna make this right!=_

 **12:55 am**  
 _=Please just … call me okay?=_

 **1:01 am  
** _=Audrey?=_

 **1:04 am  
** _=Audrey?=_

The pleas went on and on until 4:37 am, when Audrey could only assume that the cheerleader had cried herself to sleep.

She highlighted the entire batch and hit delete.

"No fucking way this is happening," she told herself. To think that Tiffany, her best and closest friend actually had –

 _Not even going to finish that thought._ She wasn't going to dignify this … this gross untruth by letting it enter her brain. Fairies were real. Space aliens were real. Monsters were real. But Tiffany's feelings? _No fucking way._

 _Why would she even bother with someone like -?_

No. If she couldn't see the texts, if she didn't see her friend then it wasn't real. Mind over matter, right?

"Master, are you gonna talk to your special friend t'day?"

 _Traitor,_ she scowled _._ Deep down, Audrey knew she had to reply, had to slap some sort of bandage over this oozing nightmare but she just couldn't deal with Tiff right now. Not when there were more present concerns.

"Where the hell are these _bugs_ coming from?"

Black, beetle-like and throbbing with red light under their shells. The same bastards she'd spotted latching onto Kasumi's face. This was the fifth one she'd found crawling over her sheets like it owned the room. She plucked it up with a tissue paper and tossed it to Momo for 'disposal'.

"Scorubs," the cat-girl explained between crunches. "Master, they only come around people who are really, really sad. Misato hated them the most!"

Wonderful, so Kasumi's emo-bugs had decided she was fair game too. Audrey clutched her skull at the indignity. "Why the hell won't my head stop _hurting?_ "

"That's just your powers waking up, Master." As usual, the cat was so obliviously chipper. "It's like your head is a big, big box an' you just got all sortsa new toysies t'play with! It's gonna go 'ouchie' for a while until it gets used t'everything! But don't worry, Master. Misato said she got the same achey-waykies when she started seeing un-normie things."

"Who the fuck is this Misato you keep yammering about?"

"Misato is –"

Momo paused.

"Misato was Momo's last master..."

"So what, you lived with her?"

"Mm! Misato was just like you, Master. She could see Momo and all the other stuff normie people can't see." The cat-girl started bouncing on the spot, she was so pepped on her memories. "Misato taught Momo how'ta read, how ta be a good kitty, an' we went on adventures t'gether and stopped lotsa mean people!"

"Well if she liked you so much, why the hell'd she kick you out? You piss on her rug or something?"

Momo's bouncing halted.

"Misato … Misato went away, Master."

 _Aw shit._ Audrey recognized that mournful gaze. Same face Nikki gave if you asked her about her grandparents, or Celeste when she started reminiscing about Tendricide. Tiffany would have kicked her in the shins for blundering past all the early warnings. _'Don't you dare snark about this, Audrey Belrose!'_

"Oh," Audrey mumbled after a long silence. "Sorry."

Her voice instantly reinvigorated the kitty cat.

"It's okay, Master, cause now Momo's got a new master who loves her super-duper much! Oh, um Master? Momo doesn't wanna be greedy but her tummy's getting all rumbly."

The cat-girl batted her eyelashes – her finest pleading face.

Grumbling, Audrey stomped over to her mini-fridge. A stale croissant made its way onto a plate along with a half-eaten bowl of ice cream she'd forgotten about. Audrey plopped the dish on the floor and drizzled a capful of schnapps over the dessert.

Momo sniffed the concoction. Her ears flattened wearily. "Master, this drinky smells funny…"

"It's juice," Audrey grunted. _Peach flavor,_ so she was only half-lying. "Trust me. It's good for you."

Momo leaned over her dish and gave a tentative lap. Her ears perked.

"Mmm! It is yummy!"

"Lemmie know if you want more." If the cat was as big a lightweight as she presumed, she'd soon have some peace and quiet.

Back on the bed, her phone began buzzing. Audrey braced herself for another incoming Tiffany message and was puzzled to find Nikki on call display.

She raised the phone to her ear. "Yeah?"

"Audrey-da?"

Audrey's breathing went tight. She threw a hand over her chest. "Celeste?"

The voice on the other end sighed in relief. "I have been attempting to contact you for some time. The characters on Nicole's communicator have been difficult to decipher."

Hold on … Had the alien woman been dialing everyone on Nikki's contact list? Hold on again … who did the little nerd _have_ on her contact list besides her and Tiff? "Why didn't you just ask Nik to help?"

"Nicole is asleep."

"Yeah, I bet you tired her out plenty."

Celeste chose not to respond to that snark. "Are you well, Audrey? Last night -"

"Me? Pssh – I'm fine. Didn't get any last night, but whatever. The guys just weren't up to my standard."

Celeste laughed abruptly.

"A-ha-ha. 'Up to standard'. That was one of your people's non-literal expressions! Their phalluses were too flaccid to procreate, yes?"

"Um … okay."

The Norai laughed again. "A most amusing joke!"

She coughed suddenly, voice returning to business.

"Audrey, I must apologize for my behavior yesterday evening. Your culture places great importance on sexual experience and it was … inappropriate of me to laugh at your status as a _vibara_. My people ostracised me for my own sexual deviancy and I should have known better. I am sorry."

She was internally kicking herself – _why d'you have to bring that up?_ – but for the telephone, Audrey played up her poker face. "I told you, I've had plenty of sex! I just take it up – Never mind. Look, we're cool, okay? Not like I care what you think."

Celeste let out a long sigh as though she were unshouldering a heavy burden. "Thank you. I feared that I had done inoperable damage to our relationship. I value our time together, Audrey-da. You are … important to me."

Audrey's heart flat-lined.

"Um … cool. Yeah, you're important to me too."

The memory of Celeste's sexy little purr replayed in her mind, making her knees wobble.

"Well then, if you are not indisposed, may I propose a rendezvous this evening? We can meet in your settlement's entertainment district and order fermented beverages."

Great, just what she needed – drinks with the happy lesbian couple. Sucking down a bitter daiquiri while Nikki petted her goat and taunted her about their sex life. "I dunno…"

"Nicole will be at her workplace tonight. You and I will be alone."

Audrey needed a moment to reset. That statement was so heavy with implications she was ready to fall over. "I'd … like that. Um, you've got cash, right?"

"Nicole has provided me with your Earth currency, yes."

"Yeah, okay. So … drinks. Hey, maybe we can hit the club after?"

"A stellar idea! Perhaps together we could attract you a mate?"

"Whatever. I'm cool if it's just the two of us."

"That would also be my preference."

Audrey didn't reply. She couldn't reply or else her excited, girlish breathing would crackle over the phone. "So … see you tonight."

She killed the call before she could do anything stupid. Glancing to make sure Momo was occupied, Audrey jumped to her feet and started fist-pumping and rocking an air guitar. Was this a date? Was Celeste flirting with her? Testing the waters? Either way, she'd just scored some more alone time with mother-fuckin' Celeste Luvendass. _Fuck, yeah!_

Audrey's phone buzzed once more. Celeste? No, just a reminder of all her missed texts.

 **JESS**  
 _=Hey hon, your phone on? My baby says she needs to talk with you – something super important. XOXO=_

 **MS. YUMI**  
 _=Well FML! Spending my day taking "sensitivity training" with Zoey's snowflake brats at the Womyn's Center. :P UGGGH! Wish someone would get me a stiff drink right about now…=_

 **HAIR SALON**  
 _=Um, you are coming in to fix your hair, right?=_

Audrey's eyes darted to the clock. _Mother fucker!_ She was late for her salon appointment! "I gotta split! Momo, where'd my shoes go? No – purse first! Momo?"

But the cat-girl's first taste of peach schnapps had already sent her face-planting into her own melted ice cream: butt in the air and tail swishing woozily as she snored away in nappy land. _Perfect._

And yet...

Grumbling again, Audrey dragged the comatose kitten under the arms and hoisted her onto the bed, making sure to wipe the ice cream dribble from the kid's mouth as she tucked the blankets around Momo's chin. _Wonder if I look that happy when I'm drunk?_ Her hand moved to brush Momo's messy hair -

"Fuck, what am I doing, pissing around here?" She had to fix her hair, get her locks dyed blue! She had a date with Celeste tonight and she had to impress!

* * *

Almost forty-five minutes and three close yellow lights later, Audrey skid-stopped at the front counter of the mall's hair salon, gasping and wheezing. She was still wearing last night's rumpled black dress and her stomach was running on half a roll of breath mints for breakfast but she was here and who gave a shit how late she was? She was Audrey Belrose, bitch!

"Yo, Ki-ki! I'm ready for my hair – YOU! What're you doing in _my_ chair?"

" _Thou._ What art _thou_ doing in my chair," came the sharp-tongued pronoun correction. Seated in the salon chair with her blue dreadlocks freshly shampooed, Zoey looked every bit the presumptuous bitch queen on her throne. "As for your question, I'm providing patronage to a local woman of colour and supporting diversity in the labor market. What are you doing, Belrose? That is, besides appropriating Goth fashion?"

Audrey's hairdresser - Cianna Delrio or whatever - glanced up from her toweling work with a peppy little smile. "Well look who sobered up and joined the living! You weren't answering your texts, chica, so I went ahead and took a walk-in. You two know each other?"

Audrey ignored the bullshit chit-chat. "You're styling _her_ hair? Really? You're just trying to piss me off, aren't you, Delrio?"

"Hey, you snooze, you lose, ese."

"Expecting your white privilege would let you queue-jump. Pathetic and predictable," Zoey added.

Audrey's eye twitched and she felt something in her head give an audible, crunchy _snap._ Oh, it was on.

"Fine. Get your shitty rat-tails styled first. Not like I care. I've been Cianna's regular for the last … oh, I dunno, couple years?"

Zoey went stiff as a board, her heterochromic eyes ringing blue and red alarm bells. "Wait … Kyanna, you style _her_ hair? You've allowed your hands to touch her –"

Audrey didn't know if cybernetic androids could vomit, but Zoey looked ready to give it a first.

"Let me out," she hissed, freaking and flailing under her salon blanket. "Release me this instant! I won't support any business that offers regular service to someone as problematic as _her!"_

Delrio stammered as the plastic drape was bundled and shucked into her arms. "Hey! You can't just – you didn't pay for –" but the social justice android was already clear through the front entrance, dine-and-dashing as fast as her stiff-kneed penguin limp would allow.

Audrey lifted her nose in a triumphant smirk. "Hmph, guess you've got time to style me after all. Okay, so I'm going neon blue today, and trim it just a – HEY!"

She'd been ready to sit her rear in Delrio's chair when the seat was abruptly spun around. _What the fuck? I could've broken my hip falling down!_

The Delrio bitch looked ready to murder her.

"Do you realize how much cash I lost between waiting for your sorry ass and her walkout?"

"You snooze, you lose," Audrey parroted back. "And it serves you right, bitch. I know what you did to Tiffany!"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Bull-effin-shit! Maybe I should start spamming this place with one-star reviews, see how you like it when everyone starts boycotting your job! Bet your boss would _love_ all the bad publicity."

This was usually the part where Delrio started flapping her hands and jabbering in Mexican, so when the Latina simply crossed her arms and calmly stepped into her face, Audrey felt her game falter.

"Chica, your friend is a lovely little girl, but my _conejito_ has stiches down to his elbow thanks to her babysitting. My bank account is shot paying for all his hospital time, my Phily won't stop shaking at night, and now I've got this bitch from child welfare riding my ass and investigating _me_ for parental neglect! If you think I'm going to feel guilty or sorry for Tiffany's hurt feelings, _eres tan loca como eres grosera."_

Angry squawking erupted from the salons' overhead lights. Audrey darted up to see a pair of fat-bellied cawglers flap their oily wings and pounce on Delrio's shadow. The Latina was a smorgasbord of stress.

Audrey's neck tingled with panic. _So this is what it's like to have a mom come down hard on your ass._ Still, she wasn't backing down to this immigrant whore.

"You told everyone – told all the babysitting moms Tiff couldn't be trusted!"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Now you've got five seconds to leave, chica, because if you don't, _meteré estas tijeras en tu sucio y enfermo coño._ "

Audrey had no idea what the hell that meant, but the scissors Kyanna placed between her knuckles like a sharpened middle finger offered plenty of suggestions. " _Cinco … cuatro …_ "

Knowing she could sprint so quickly was a revelation. "That bitch! Threating … she was threatening me! I aughta –"

Turning the corner, Audrey just managed to hit the emergency brake and avoid slamming into Zoey, who startled. "Again, you keep hounding me!"

The thin girl seemed to have been pacing on the spot the whole while. She was dressed in another activist tee and jeans combo – _#NotMyPresident_ was the hashtag of the day – but she was also wearing a black choker with a pendant she kept fingering.

Hands on her hips, Audrey snorted. "Gonna move, bitch?"

No word. Zoey stuck her thumb in her mouth, chewing on her nail as she muttered to herself – "unacceptable … unacceptable …" The hand around her pendant squeezed tighter and tighter until Audrey was sure her knuckles would peel and bleed.

"Bzzt! Error, error," Audrey taunted. "Whatsamatter? Your crappy robot bod all _busted_?"

That insult flipped Zoey's final trigger. Her eyes narrowed hard. "When I'm done with Maye," she declared, "you're next."

Warning delivered, Zoey spun on her heel and made her retreat – limping quickly with dark purpose. Audrey blinked and screwed up her face.

 _Just what the hell was that about?_

* * *

Much as Audrey wanted to decipher Zoey's robo-rant, she was fucking starving. Mall food was shit but she needed a greasy burger pronto. _What's she gonna do, anyway? Call out Tiff in a campus news article? Gimmie a break!_

The universe opted 'no' on that break. Looming in front of the food court like a phantom stalker, Audrey spotted the black shadow creature.

 _Shit!_ Audrey ducked into a shoe store, peering around the corner. _Don't think it saw me._ The shadow stood idly, shoulders slouching and head askew, like it was in low-power mode. A passing couple with food trays seemed to rouse its interest. It followed them to the garbage cans and, after they had dumped their wrappers and cups down the chute, it reached in and retrieved the discarded fountain drinks, pouring the leftover liquid into the tendrils of its chest.

 _That how it eats?_ Audrey wondered. No, it seemed to be storing the liquid in a pouch. "Great, I nearly get curb-stomped twice by a God-damn garbage picker!"

The shadow suddenly cocked its head in her direction. It raised an 'ear', listening for something. Audrey stiffened.

It stood and started marching her way.

* * *

"Dammit, not again!" Audrey shoulder-banged her way out the front entrance, not giving a shit about how many people she had to plow through.

The shadow creature shifted into vapor form and slithered through the gaps in the crowd.

Outside, the sun shone bright and piercing over the mall's parking lot but the black silhouette stomped forward undeterred by the perfect weather. Audrey resorted to screaming and throwing random trash from her purse to gain some distance. The monster merely ducked its head to the side or let the wadded up tampons phase through its chest. "Dammit, just leave me alone already!"

A deafening honk, and Audrey freaked as a fast-moving convertible nearly clipped her. "Move, bitch!" Saturday afternoon, and the vehicle rush into the parking lot was booming. _Motherfucker, he was speeding!_

The fast traffic didn't bother the shadow silhouette. Even without eyes it seemed to sense every oncoming vehicle, pausing or back-stepping to dodge their attacks with minimal effort.

It pursued her all the way across the parking lot to the main road, a concrete river surging with downtown traffic. Audrey slipped and skidded across the sidewalk, retreating in a backwards crabwalk and shrieking for "Momo! Momo!" until her head banged into a pedestrian crosswalk post and she could run no further.

The black shadow filled her vision, a titan blocking out the sun. Its cold hand reached out for her -

\- and it pushed the 'walk' button.

"Huh?"

Audrey watched stupidly as the black shadow beast pressed the crosswalk button a second time. The pedestrian corridor chimed, the yellow lights flashed and the shadow creature raised its head to observe the device.

It pushed the button a third time, as if testing the man-made apparatus and its response system. While the device ran, its arm dissolved into smoke that squeezed into the pole's circuitry. The crosswalk shut down instantly. Satisfied with its experimentation, the shadow straightened its back and stood.

Waiting.

"Well, you gonna eat me or something?"

It glanced at her, maybe finally realizing that of the multitude of humans it walked among, she alone could see it.

Audrey jabbed its forearm, sending ripples through its smoky body. _Freezing_!

The creature titled its head. _So you can see me._ When she tried to poke it again, it intercepted her hand with its own, swatting her away, but not violently, just … irritated.

 _Stop that,_ it seemed to say. _I'm busy._

Waiting.

So she stood and waited with it, determined to figure out this demon creature. Plenty of other pedestrians came and went – some stepping through the shadow, some looking at her rumpled dress and wondering if she was a crazy person. She pulled out her cellphone and started fake-texting to give herself some cover.

The shadow monster kept standing, a supernatural crossing guard. _What's it waiting for?_

"Audrey!"

 _Son of a_ – On the other side of the crosswalk, ashen faced and desperate - "Tiffany?"

The blonde looked like shit – red-eyed from crying and dressed in crumpled white sundress, but now new hope glimmered in her eyes. "Audrey!" she waved back.

The four dragonfly wings on her back waved along as well.

Audrey side-glanced at the black shadow, which had suddenly tensed like a pistol duellist at high noon. _Motherfucker… was it -?_

"Get back, Tiff! Don't you dare –"

Tiffany hit the button. She hit the mother-effing button! "I just want to talk, Audrey!"

The shadow creature raised an arm, reforming its hand into a blade. "Shit! Stay away from me, Tiff!"

"No! Audrey, you're my friend! I'm not leaving you!"

Tiffany took a first step across the divide. The shadow plunged its weapon into the crosswalk post. Only Audrey could see the tendrils of black smoke spiralling and jumping up the length of the pole. Sparks flew and the lights discreetly 'popped'.

A blaring honk and Tiffany jumped back just in time to dodge the red corvette. "Whoa! Hey, what's wrong with the lights?"

"Ha!" Audrey barked at the shadow, flashing double-birds. "Whatcha got now, huh?"

The shadow's arms slumped, but it remained unfazed. That was when Audrey saw the concrete sidewalk behind Tiffany ripple with thick smoke, the warning approach as a _second_ black shadow silhouette arose and took form directly behind her friend.

Its hands hovered over Tiffany's shoulders.

"TIFF, GET AWA-!"

* * *

Blue eyes.

That was the last thing Audrey remembered.

Tiffany's startled, blue eyes, wide with shock and wondering why her feet had lost their balance, why her body had suddenly left the ground.

The bus came so quickly.

* * *

Audrey's palms dug into her head, trying to ground herself as she looked numbly onto the scene.

Tire treads burned into the intersection, the bus driver rambling to the paramedics.

Tiffany.

The camera crew snapping photos, the onlookers mumming incoherently.

Tiffany.

Golden beads – the luminous particles from Tiffany's 'after-effect' wings – thousands of them scattered across the pavement like pearls from a snapped necklace.

Tiffany.

Red smears. A rag doll thrown limp across the roadway.

Tiffany.

Tiffany.

A hand on her shoulder, a look of concern.

"Is that her name? Miss, I need you take a deep breath, all right? You need to stop screaming –"

"TIFFANY!"

* * *

The clatter of gurneys, the harsh glare of sterile walls. The murmur of physicians, alien and inhuman in their green scrubs and facial masks. The dispassionate calls over the PA system.

Audrey remembered this hospital. Tiff had rushed her here for a stomach pumping after she'd taken too many of Kasumi's little red pills. She wondered if Tiffany had waited outside of the operating theatre too. Probably.

Miss Jessie, she faintly realized, was here. Pacing up and down the floor and intercepting anyone who crossed the hall for information. Nikki too, still wearing her barista uniform, sitting in between a camouflaged Celeste and an older woman Audrey could only assume was the nerd-girl's mother.

A doctor pushed through the double doors, tired and jaded. A few words slipped through her daze and into recognition.

 _Cranial trauma, hemorrhaging._

 _Spinal fracture._

Audrey stood and walked away.

She walked away from the screaming – Miss Jessie, falling to her knees and clawing at her hair.

She walked away from the uncontrollable sobbing – Nikki holding and clutching at Celeste.

She was vaguely aware of a blue kimono and swishing tail riding with her in the elevator but when Momo's head nuzzled her leg – a mutual reassurance – Audrey couldn't even muster the will to caress her back.

 _None of this is real._ She walked to the front lobby, squeezing her shot glass. Tiffany, her best and closest friend, unconscious and -

Audrey crushed the mental image like a bothersome flutterfly. "Tiff's gonna be fine," she told herself. "Everything's gonna be fine."

If she couldn't see her friend, unconscious and breathing through machines, then it wasn't real. Fairies were real. Space aliens were real. Monsters were real. But Tiffany? Targeted and attacked by a shadow demon?

"I'm high," she told herself. "High and seeing shi-"

Her body went stiff and trance-like. _No…_

The black shadow creature.

It was here.

Standing tall and menacing outside the hospital's front entryway. At the mall, Audrey had discovered there were two of them.

Now there were a dozen.

In a collective snap, they all looked her way, tilting their faceless voids as if in recognition. Then they turned away. She was nothing to them. Their heads were angled skyward, focused on the hospital windows like a pack of shadowy bloodhounds stalking a wounded fox's den. Deep inside her heart, Audrey knew they were all locked on Tiffany's room.

"Why aren't they coming in?" Despite their lack of interest, Audrey's body refused to move, terrified that any sudden motion would set the pack upon her.

"They're waiting," Momo whispered back, equally still and attentive.

"Waiting for what?"

The cat-girl glanced up at her, stern and serious.

"Their next order."

Audrey sunk her teeth into her fingers. Hospital. No smoking. She was down to sucking on flesh and blood to sate her anxiety.

"Can you fight them?"

Momo shook her head negative.

"They don't hurt like people. They'll just come back, like rainclouds but –"

"But?"

"Master … Momo knows a way we can keep them out. To give us time."

"Time," Audrey nodded.

Time to find the one giving the orders.

Audrey felt the shot glass, smooth and cold between her fingers. Gave it one last disgusted look, then marched to the lobby's trash cans and smashed it to pieces.

She wouldn't look away any longer.

"You said there's a way?"

"It won't make them go away," Momo cautioned.

Audrey nodded. Took a deep breath.

"Show me."


	6. Potions and Perils

It was ironic – hours ago she'd been cursing Momo's very existence, swearing up a blue streak at the shitty-ass world that had ruined her life by saddling her with this cloying and vomit-inducing sack of cuteness. _What good is something so dumb and kiddy?_

Now, with her best friend in the hospital and a swarm of monsters waiting to finish her off, Audrey was ready to dump her inheritance into the donation bin of the nearest no-kill shelter. Momo knew a way to hold back the shadows. This cat was Tiffany's lifeline!

Momo scampered at the lead, chirping out their ingredient list: "Bib-bobbers, Master. We need something with happy thoughts."

Audrey pulled on a pair of sandals from her purse and made a mad dash to the nearest playground, where the bouncing radishes bloomed in the presence of giggling pre-schoolers and their smiling parents. She grabbed a half-dozen vegetables by their stalks and stuffed them into a plastic grocery bag.

Momo continued. "Quee-quays."

"The fuck?"

"Quee-quays. It's tricksy t'explain. They like people who're sad … but in a happy way."

Audrey puzzled it over. "Bittersweet?" Momo nodded.

Quee-quays, she discovered, were pastel-blue praying mantises, constantly rubbing their bulbous eyes with front claws that resembled teardrops. The downtown cineplex was featuring a sappy, romantic movie about two puppy-eyed teens who find out they both have cancer, and quee-quays were swarming all over the tear-inducing bullshit like fake butter on crappy theatre popcorn. Audrey bought a back row ticket and started scooping handfuls of the blue insects into her soda cup.

She tried not to look at the screen whenever the movie cut to a hospital scene. The tremble in her hands made work impossible. "Next?"

The last item would be the easiest and the hardest to obtain.

"Flutterflies."

* * *

Nikki paced up and down her floorboards the whole time, interrogating Celeste like a nagging bitch and distracting Audrey from her vital work.

"Why is she here again? Why didn't you tell her to get rid of the cat? And why is she standing on my gaming chair and sweeping a broom over our ceiling?"

"You wanna shut up before you kill any more of these buggers?" _Seriously_ , Audrey cringed, it was hard enough knocking the pink love-suckers off the stucco without Nikki PMS-ing and killing the bugs with her bitch-vibes. The flutterflies squeed as her broom batted them from their perches. On the floor, Momo bounded about with a plastic sack in her mouth, bagging the rose petal harvest that Audrey rained from above.

Celeste offered a weak defense to her lover. "Audrey explained that this was necessary to assist your companion, Tiffany. I assumed it was a human grieving ritual."

Audrey nodded along. "This is gonna keep Tiff safe from the bastard who put her in the hospital."

"What, the bus driver?"

"No, you moron, the shadow – never mind. Hey, Celeste, you wanna move me forward some more?" The Norai had taken one look at Audrey wobbling on a wheeled chair in high heels and positioned herself to hold the unsteady platform.

Nikki had her own thoughts on the matter. "Are you stoned or something? How can you be bullshitting around like this when Tiffany's been hurt and needs –"

A revelation sent the bluenette gasping.

"Celeste, your ship! You've got a med bay with all this space equipment, you could –"

"My medicines are for Norai physiology, Nicole. Your friend is best left with your human healers."

"The human healers are saying she might never _walk_ again! Celeste, you can -"

"Could you repair that feline's body without prior knowledge of its anatomy, Chiletto?"

The rebuke killed all further comments from the gamer. The Norai turned to their visitor.

"Audrey-da, I think it would be prudent if you left us for the time being."

"Yeah, I've got what I need." At any other time she would have lingered, enjoying the chance to chill with Celeste. It occurred to her that all this time she'd been treating the bounty hunter to an eyeful of the Audrey Up-Skirt Camera and the realization made her heart wobble beneath her breast.

The chair also wobbled out from underneath her. "Whoa!"

Celeste caught her, bridal style. For a wonderful instant, Audrey could see her flushed, crimson eyes reflected in alien gold. A sudden purr from Celeste's throat surprised even the alien woman.

The Norai swallowed and looked away. "Are you injured?"

"I'm good," Audrey stammered back. The refreshing cool of the alien's skin was making her burn up. "Hey, can we cancel tonight?"

"Understandable. Given the circumstances, I should be here for Nicole."

"Cancel _what_ tonight? Celeste? What're you two talking about?"

Audrey allowed the Norai to set her down, then she snatched the flutterfly bag from Momo, sensing it was high time to skedaddle from the lover's nest.

Seemed Celeste hadn't been totally upfront about her plans this evening …

* * *

Bib-bobbers, quee-quays, flutterflies. Audrey studied her magical menagerie, rudely crammed into a glass container in her family's kitchen. The muffled bib-bobbers barely had room to purse their lips, but they still did their best to keep up their creepy singing.

" _Das sind mir… unbekannte blumen… schneide … schneide…"_

Audrey rattled the jar until the radishes were shuffled away from the sides. "Weirdos," she muttered.

Squatting on the counter, Momo looked over their collection and nodded approvingly. "The last thing we need is something from your body, Master."

Right, a little virgin priestess magic. Audrey rifled through the cutlery drawer with one hand while she stretched a lock of black hair taut from her head. Steeling her nerves with a whisper – "Tiffany," – she flicked the butcher's knife through her roots and dropped the strands into the pot.

"There. That enough?"

Momo looked at her weirdly. "You could'a just spit."

 _Oh now she tells me!_ "Fucking whatever. Now what?"

"Now we hafta combine their powers, Master."

"Seriously?"

"Yup-yup!"

Audrey flicked her eyes from the happily smiling cat-girl to the prison jar of adorable cartoon creatures. Sensing that she could set them free, the magical animals started whimpering. Their huge eyes went soft as butter.

"This sounds like something that lands you in Hell's deluxe penthouse suite."

"But Master, don't you wanna save your friend?"

That settled it. Without a second thought for the lives inside, Audrey clamped a lid over the creature container and hit the button for 'blend'.

* * *

One pulping and countless, cartoony squees of agony later, Audrey grimaced before the doors to Kasumi's studio with a jar of black, magical creature slurry weighing down her arms. She was fairly certain there were still intact eyes bobbing about the cocktail.

Her stomach churned at the very thought of passing through this door. The west wing of the mansion belonged to her train wreck of a mother and Audrey typically avoided Kasumi's rooms the way that Delrio slut avoided contraceptives.

But what Momo's magic spell called for next could only be found among Kasumi's posessions.

 _Fuck this,_ Audrey huffed. _I just murdered the background muppets from Sesame Street to get Tiffany out of this shit. Sure as hell ain't letting 'mommy dearest' stop me now._

Pushing aside her feelings of disgust, Audrey shoulder-barged her way in for the next phase of Momo's black magic.

"The goopy stuff, that's our paint, Master. Now we're ready t'make magic spell scrolls!"

Kasumi snoozed away on her divan with a bottle dangling from her fingers. Audrey banged about the art supply cabinets as loudly as she pleased. If the woman was too drunk to notice the black bugs crawling over her body, she sure as hell wouldn't wake up while her daughter stole some fine-tipped brushes and canvases.

Momo insisted they paint on rice paper or hemp cloth but Audrey didn't know what the hell those were so she settled for cardstock, cut into 2" by 7" strips as per the cat-girl's directions.

"Okey-dokey, now paint a big line across … no, not across-across, it has to be across-but-down-a-bit."

"Shit, will you make up your mind?" Audrey stubbed out her cigarette while dabbing her paint brush into the jar of magical animal friend goop. She couldn't just paint, either. Momo insisted they follow a ritual: dimming the lights and working only under a candle's flame, burning incense to purify the air and then clapping and bowing to show reverence.

Audrey put up with the happy-clap bullshit but the rest had to be improvised. For incense, she lit a joint and let that burn away in the ashtray. Firelight was supplied by a wax candle app she downloaded onto her phone.

"Master, if we don't do it just right, the magic spell might go 'n break!"

"Yeah, well if we don't hurry this shit up, those shadow freaks are gonna go break Tiffany!" Christ, she couldn't suck down her cigarettes fast enough! Back in high school, she'd always hated art class. Sculpting clay, arranging bouquets or colouring posters she could handle. Hell, give her a make-up kit and she could paint the most fabulous faces! But anything fine and dexterous like pencil illustrations? Those pissed her off to the point of ripping up her sketchbooks. _How does Nikki make this drawing shit look so easy?_

Finishing one of Momo's "spell scrolls" took almost an hour of crumpled and torn test runs; sixty minutes of paint splotches over her arms and dress and an endless headache of _'oh, I'm not worthy'_ bowing and clapping but finally the cat-girl's eyes lit up with success. "That's it! That one's super-duper perfect, Master!"

Audrey held up the paper strip, now decorated with columns of weird runes that reminded her of little stick figures with spread-eagle arms and tiny dashes for heads. "Did you just make me write Chinese?"

"Kanji," Momo corrected. Whatever that meant.

"Well what's it say?"

"They're magic spell words, Master! Their job's t'keep the shadow monsters away!" Momo's tail swished over the largest set of vertical characters – an electrical pole decorated with dashes followed by a jazzed up number three with fancy curls. " _Mamoru._ That word's fer protecting people."

The next column was crowned with what looked like a fancy letter 'H' and two open crocodile jaws balancing dashes on their snouts. " _Misato._ Momo doesn't know any of the kami here t'call fer help, but Misato had super-duper strong magic so maybe she'll help us."

A basic translation was scratching through Audrey's head. "Protect … us … Misato? _That's_ what I spent all this time writing? A painted postcard to your old owner? Seriously?"

Momo wasn't about to let her former master be slighted. Yowling like a petty child, she plucked the paper tag in her mouth and dropped it in the path of one of the black scorub beetles scuttling around Kasumi's studio. The magical bug immediately stiffened and beat a full retreat.

"Holy shit, what'd you do? S'like you stuck a can of bug spray in its face!"

"Scorubs only like sad things, Master. All the happy thoughts from the bib-bobbers an' the other creatures makes 'em wanna run away."

 _The ink!_ Audrey glanced back at her jar of ground-up magical animal guts. _It really is glowing._ On the walk over, she'd dismissed the phosphorescent glimmer as a stress fantasy but now she was certain: an eerie gleam, the kind given off by nuclear waste in cheesy sci-fi movies, pulsing in and out from the jar to the rhythm of breathing lungs.

"And these … scrolls. They'll work on those shadow things too?"

"Momo thinks so."

"You _think so?_ " Audrey kicked over her chair so hard that Kasumi snorted out of her alcohol stupor for a second. "My best friend's gonna get shanked by shadow puppets from hell and you've been wasting my time making bullshit Japanese arts 'n crafts because you _think_ they'll help?"

"Stop being mean, Master! Momo dunno 'cause she's never seen those smoky things before! But they smell the same as scorubs."

Audrey looked at the paper tag, flimsy and wet from being smudged over in crappy Japanese characters. _This kindergarten finger-paint crap is gonna save Tiff?_

On the other hand, the jar of black, breathing sludge…

"Fine. Let's do this shit."

* * *

"Hey, stink-bags – lookie what I've got!"

It was sundown by the time Audrey raced back to the hospital. The shadows guarding the front lawn stood menacing and merciless under the red sky - pillars of black flame ready to cut loose and burn down everything good and blonde and pure.

Against these black sentinels she was just one scrawny-ass girl with greasy hair and a paint-splotched party dress. Against monsters that could twist their bodies into living weapons she was coming to the fight with a kitten and a purse crammed full of painted paper. She had nothing.

But when the rear-most shadow glanced idly at her – turned away and _dismissed_ her – an inner fire raged from deep inside her gut and she strutted forth like she was a mother-fucking goddess.

"Don't you fuckin' ignore me, assholes! Brought something with me, you dickless freaks! How d'ya like these apples?"

She whipped out the first of her paper tags and the nearest shadow recoiled, raising a hand to block its face. A hiss like sizzling meat came from its body. Little tendrils of shadow were bleeding off its form like tiny insects fleeing a drowning ship. It stepped away from Audrey and her paper. The bleeding ceased. It chanced a step forward and the agony resumed.

With a roar of frustration, it backpedalled across the lawn.

Audrey's face twisted into a triumphant grin. "Fuuuuck, yes!"

She charged forward with a battle scream, not giving a shit how many nurses or patients looked at her funny as she and her kitty cat bounded abound the lawn, flapping paper tags in the faces of invisible monsters. In that moment, Nikki and her basement-dwelling gamer freaks had more combined dignity than her, but Audrey didn't care. The shadow creatures were retreating!

She had power!

"Now, Master! Set up the barrier!"

 _Right!_ Audrey had brought a bottle of industrial strength glue from Kasumi's studio and she applied the white slop liberally to the flower planters framing the hospital entryway. She slapped a spell tag onto each vase and felt her hair fly off her shoulders in a sudden rush of power.

The shadow pack had already been stepping back from her single tag; with two of them staked down, the tags seemed to amplify one another's powers. Audrey could feel energy thrumming over the door like a spiritual bug zapper. A magical field of stinky, sentimental energy now protected the entrance and the hateful shadow freaks couldn't go anywhere near it without dissolving!

" _Sonuvabitch,_ it actually works! Not bad, cat!"

"Kitty-cat," Momo reminded her, but Audrey had no time to retort. This afternoon she'd counted a dozen black shadows outside the hospital. Her current head tally only went up to nine.

Cursing, Audrey dashed inside.

* * *

"No running in the hallways!"

The nurses and orderlies all snapped at her like mangy piranhas. Audrey ignored the bottom-feeders. She could already spy one of the shadows standing guard in front of Tiff's room like a cross-armed bouncer at Lusties. Audrey snapped another spell tag from her purse and the shadow hastily stepped aside as though she'd flashed a VIP pass.

In the doorway, Audrey froze.

 _Tiffany…_

Her body was smothered by hospital equipment – blankets, breathing tubes, a neck brace and IV drips - but there was no mistaking those blonde angel locks draped across the pillow. Against that shining, golden hair, the shadow silhouettes at Tiffany's shoulders looked all the more foul and rotten.

She caught the black intruders observing the luminescent gold that spread from underneath Tiffany's bedsheets. _Those damn dragonfly wings_ \- they were still there! Still glowing like candles in the darkness, gentle and reassuring.

The wings seemed to puzzle the shadows – they'd been sent to 'off' a human girl, not this half-fairy hybrid oddity. The one on Tiff's left decided that enough was enough. It snatched up the closest wing in its hand and began crumpling the glassy beads.

Audrey's spell tag slashed right through its shoulder. Smoky skin erupted into writhing tendrils. "Don't fucking touch her! Nobody fucking touches her!"

Momo echoed her refrain, hissing and slashing at the remaining shadow's legs. "Nyaa, get away, bad guys!"

The shadow silhouettes hadn't been expecting this kind of assault. They slithered to the doorway in a hasty retreat.

"Yeah, how d'ya like that, ass-wipes?" Damn, did it feel good to be the one with power!

"It only keeps them away," Momo reminded her. "Look, Master - they're still waiting outside the door."

"Then that's as far as they fucking go."

Audrey got to work – glue out, tags out; covertly covering the hospital room with her magical handiwork. Underneath the seat of the visitor's chair – a spell tag. On the underside of the window sill – a spell tag. Behind Tiffany's headboard – she slapped down two for safety. Discreet spots – nowhere a nurse or orderly would notice. She'd even bought a Get Well card and tucked one of the paper tags inside.

She'd been so focused on setting up her magical defenses, she hadn't realize how closely she'd approached her sleeping friend.

Tiffany…

"You're god-damn lucky I'm around to look after you, y'know that?"

Tiffany's body simply continued its laboured breathing. Audrey flinched.

"Sorry … fuck, I didn't mean – I'm fixing this, okay? I just need some time. I'm gonna get rid of these shadow freaks and whoever the fuck it is that's been calling the shots. You're gonna get better and then we'll grab Nik, go to Lusties and I'll buy out the entire bar. All the weak-ass lemon drops and shitty hard lemonades your pussy liver can stomach, okay?"

No reply, but Tiffany's wings seemed to perk a bit when she touched her shoulder. "Shit, I hope these things aren't permanent."

The crystalline insect limbs had knit themselves back together after being shattered in the bus crash but like the rest of the cheerleader's body, they remained sickly and weak. Tiffany's phantom limbs had gone limp and droopy, spread down the bed and across the floor like the leaves of a dried-up houseplant.

 _Wait, weren't there like, four of these things?_ Audrey only counted three. No, wait – the last one was just stuck, twitching underneath her back. "God damn docs must've squashed it underneath. Hang on, I've got this."

She was in the middle of freeing the phantom limb when she was interrupted by a horrified cry from the doorway. "What're you doing?"

Miss Jessie – vending machine coffee spilled at her feet, mouth agape in disbelief. The killer-hot porn star was dressed in a cheetah print tank-top and ripped jean shorts like she'd just walked off the set of her latest fan vid, but bloodshot eyes and frazzled hair declared she'd done nothing all day but pace the hospital hallways.

"One minute. I leave here one minute for coffee and you –"

There were no words for a betrayal so deep. Tiffany's mom rammed through the invisible shadows parked in the hallway, marching for Audrey like a soldier on the warpath.

"I was just –" Audrey realized how wrong this looked when you couldn't see invisible, magic limbs. Throwing the blankets from Tiffany's chest? Pushing the comatose girl onto her side? Scrabbling at Tiffany's back like she was trying to grab loose change from under the sheets?

Fuck, this looked bad.

Miss Jessie marched up and snatched up her wrist. "My baby is _hurt!_ Her back – the doctor said she might not – how could you be so _reckless?_ "

Audrey flinched and looked away. Up until now, she'd only known Tiffany's mom for her flirty smiles and drunken laughter. Now, Miss Jessie's eyes bored into her with enough bottled-up fury to kill an entire city's worth of flutterflies. The wrath in those grown-up eyes was god-damn terrifying. Audrey didn't care if her babbling made sense, she just threw down apologies like sacrificial offerings on an angry goddesses' altar.

"I'm sorry … I fucked up … so stupid, I'm so stupid…"

When she'd proved herself pathetic enough, Miss Jessie released the sharp squeeze around her wrist, casting her off like garbage. In the presence of this furious mother, Momo had smartly done another vanishing act. All that remained of the cat was a sulfur stink. Miss Jessie sniffed the air and gave a disapproving frown.

 _Probably thinks I was smoking in here,_ Audrey cringed.

"My baby … she told me you two'd had a big argument; that she was going out to try and find you this morning."

Fresh tears were streaming from Miss Jessie's eyes but she wiped them aside and dug in.

"What in God's name were you two fighting over? What was so damn important you let _this_ happen to my little girl?"

Audrey flapped her jaw in protest. "I didn't –"

 _But last night, if you hadn't…_

There was no arguing with a mother scorned. Audrey plowed through the shadows at their magical boundary line and ran.

* * *

She could sense the cat-girl watching her as she screamed into her pillows, legs thrashing on her mattress.

"Master, are you angry?"

"I'm not angry," Audrey hissed, whipping around with demon-red eyes. "I'm PISSED! I'm doing my god-damn best to help but everyone thinks I'm crazy or that it's my fault Tiff's in the hospital! Fuck the shit-head who sent those shadow freaks!"

Audrey stalked across the room to confront the cat-girl face to face. "You're sure, right? That there's someone controlling those shadows?"

Momo was a quivering mess but she managed a nod. "S-super sure, Master. Stuff like bib-bobbers or quee-quays? They don't wanna hurt people, they just wanna play with them. But those shadow monsters are super-smarty. They know how t'make plans an' how t'hunt, just like Momo! They gotta have a master telling 'em what t'do!"

Audrey stood and took a pull from her flask to help her think.

"Zoey."

"Zoe-who?"

"Zoey from my physics class! The snowflake who thinks she's a robot? Fuck that shit-head, she's gotta be the one behind this!"

It all made sense, and the alcohol loosened her tongue enough to explain it all to Momo.

"Yesterday, when you chased me all the way to campus? Well Zoey got triggered in class 'cause I was too legit for her! She must've sent that shadow freak to try and rough me up as payback for pissing her off! And this afternoon! Do you know what she said to me? ' _When I'm done with Maye, you're next!_ ' She's been planning to get rid of Tiffany all this time!"

"But why?"

"Why the hell not? Zoey's one of those try-hards who's gotta have perfect marks on her transcript; she's had it in for Tiff ever since my girl racked up the hottest GPA and nabbed all the academic scholarships! I mean, Tiff's Miss _U of Excellence!_ Sure, they stuck Zoey on the _U of Diversity_ poster but she's gotta share that with some Arab chick with a towel on her head and a Mexican dork with a porn-stache! Playing runner up to Tiff and all her 'white, cis-gendered privilege'? Yeah, that'd piss Zoey right the fuck off!"

 _Wait!_

"Money," Audrey declared. "Yeah, that's gotta be it! Zoey's probably from some poor-ass, ghetto family. She needs scholarships if she wants to keep studying, and if Tiff was out of the picture, Zoey would suddenly be number one in all her classes and she'd get her entire tuition paid for!"

And it had all started two days ago. The shadow silhouette she'd encountered at Lusties must have been a test run – to see how thoroughly Zoey could control and command the smoke freaks. And the next morning, she'd waltzed into class so smug and full of herself, giving herself fancy-ass new pronouns cause she was suddenly a –

Audrey whipped out her phone, dialed a number for confirmation. "Hey, Nik – you're a nerd, right? What the hell's a Class-3 Cybernetic Android?"

"Audrey, Tiffany's in the hospital and you –"

"Just shut up and tell me! What's a Class-3 Cybernetic Android?"

"A cock-sucking Mary Sue."

Audrey reared back. "Nikki?" Holy shit, had the little dork been chugging back testosterone? _Grandma, what big balls you've got!_ She'd always assumed Celeste wore the pants in that relationship but now she didn't know up from down!

On the other end of the line, Nikki took a deep breath.

"Okay, look – 'Class-3' is a fandom term for robots fan-characters that can use mystical energy. Some of it's cool, like Vision using the Mind Stone, but then you've got crap like Skippy the Jedi Droid and robots who're Force sensitive when they don't even have midi-chlorians! It's total fan-girl bullshit up there with Coldsteel the Hedgehog and Nyx the baby alicorn from My Little Pony! Now, _my_ original characters, on the other hand -"

"Whoa, deep breath, nerderella! Wanna give me that in English?"

Nikki exhaled. "Too long, didn't read? They're robots that can use magic, okay?"

"Just what I needed to know."

She killed the call and turned to Momo.

"It's Zoey."

* * *

They had their target. All they needed now was a plan of attack.

"No use getting up in her face at the mall or grabbing her in class. She'll just play crybaby and make me look like the crazy bitch." _And once she knows I'm onto her, she'll send her shadows after me non-stop. Gotta find a spot to get that nut-job all alone._

"How's about you go over to her house?" Momo suggested. "Ask her mommy if you two can have a play-date!"

Audrey gave a dry cough. "Yeah, how about you leave the planning to me, cat?" Even if she waltzed into the on-campus dormitories during visiting hours, there was no way in hell Zoey would let Audrey into her room. "You get that bug yet?"

"Almost, Master!" One final scorub was still infesting the room and this bastard had survival instincts, skittering away like an over-caffeinated lemming. The cat-girl hopped around on all fours trying to nab the black beetle but it kept one jump ahead, finally scuttling up the wall to evade Momo's jaws.

The cat-girl didn't slow down one bit. Momo just bounded for the wall at full speed. Audrey was convinced she'd ram it face-first, but then the kitten leapt _into_ the floor.

Audrey had to blink and double-check that. The kitten had leapt _into the floor._

Where Momo had dove, there was now a cat-shaped shadow racing across the floor, her silhouette like the fin of a charging shark. The cat-shadow bounded up the wall until the scorub was sitting directly in its inky puddle. Then Momo pounced _out_ of the wall in a burst of sulfur, snatching the beetle in her hands as she made a perfect, three-point landing.

"Gotcha!" she crowed before treating herself to a snack.

Audrey clambered off the bed. "Wait! How the fuck did you do that?"

The cat-girl giggled between bites. "Master, Momo's a kitty!" She didn't elaborate, but from her laughter, Audrey figured that she'd just asked a bird how it flew or a fish how it swam. "It's just what Momo does!"

Audrey needed to see this in action again. There was an old laser pointer keychain in one of her drawers. She whipped it out and gave Momo a red-light target on the wall. "Do that again."

Momo needed no encouragement to chase after a shiny point of light. She launched herself like a chocolatey bolt of lightning, diving into the carpet once more and climbing the wall as a cat-shaped shadow. She tagged the dot and burst from the wall, a three-dimensional girl once more.

"Holy shit, that's awesome!" Audrey tested the cat again, waving her laser light over the floor, onto the bed; even the ceiling. Momo caught up with the laser every time. So long as the surfaces were directly connected, her shadow-form could travel between them like … well, like a shadow.

The room stunk like an ash pit from all of Momo's sulfuric popping in and out of surfaces but Audrey had one final test to confirm. She shone her laser pointer in front of her closed door, then angled the light so it traveled beneath the door, out into the hallway.

Shadow-Momo slid through the underside crack in the door. "Got it, Master!" her three-dimensional form sing-songed from outside.

When the door opened, Audrey greeted her cat with a grin so devious, even the devil would think twice about double-crossing Mademoiselle Belrose.

"Cat, how's about you and me go for that little play-date with Zoey?"


	7. Into the Android's Dungeon

Miss Yumi took a deep drag from her cigarette, savoring the vapor wafting through her lungs before exhaling a heavy stream of smoke into her cluttered office. "Gotta say, I never expected to see you around campus on a Sunday, Belrose."

"Yeah, well I've got a meeting today." Audrey blew her own stream of nicotine out the open window. Up here on the fourth floor of the engineering building, she had a direct line of sight to the red-bricked girl's dormitory, the lair of the shadow-summoning witch, Zoey.

"Ooh, sneaking into one of the fraternity houses? Gonna go down for a little Sunday slam with one of the football jocks?"

Audrey nearly gagged on her next puff. "Fuck no! I'm meeting up with a chick from class, that's all. She's been stirring up shit with my friend and I'm gonna put that bitch in her -"

She had to stop there. Had to march over to the wastebasket and cough out the spittle Miss Yumi's teasing had forced up her esophagus. Her throat burned with the acidic memory of the Zeta House – of being manhandled and stripped and –

When she coughed up a second time, Miss Yumi offered up her thermos. "Whoa, need a drink?"

"Naw, I'm good. I'm good." Audrey wiped her mouth and tried to resume her nonchalant pose at the window. _Damn shakes._ "Hey, thanks for meeting with me. I really wanted a smoke."

She'd also wanted to test out the elusiveness of Momo's shadow form. She'd been smoking and shooting shit with her slacker of a teacher for a good fifteen minutes and Miss Yumi still hadn't noticed the cat-shaped shadow swimming across her carpet and puddling around Audrey's feet.

Her physics teacher nodded thoughtfully. "How's our cheerleader doing?"

"You heard about Tiff?"

"Have I heard? Kid, I've only been asked to empty my wallet for seven different donation campaigns. The cheer squad, the football team, the student union; they're all chipping in to crowd-fund her medical bills. You notice what a ghost town it is here today? That ain't 'cause of Sunday hangovers. Half the campus is probably at the hospital right now, laying down wreaths and sobbing like the pope got shot."

 _Damn, Tiff's really that popular?_

"She's gonna get better," Audrey snarled. She walked over to Miss Yumi's bookshelves, ostensibly to browse the titles but in fact checking whether the teacher could see the cat shadow hoping between her shelves. _Maybe normal people can't see her at all when she's like this,_ Audrey decided.

"Hey, you actually read all these books?" Audrey pulled out a random math textbook, surprised by its weight. She was even more surprised when she opened the cover and found the pages hollowed out to hide a small bottle of rice wine.

"That's required reading," Miss Yumi smirked as Audrey inspected the label.

"Holy shit, this stuff's twenty years old! Horde much?"

"Hey, I'm a connoisseur! Plus, unlike common booze, sake gets better with age. Heck, that's one of my younger bottle babies. I've got one sucker back home that's pushing a hundred."

"Damn, you actually drink that engine cleaner?"

"It's a family heirloom, smartass. Strictly ornamental. Anyway, chill as it's been to hang with you, I've got marking to get through." Aiko drank deeply from her thermos before waving her off with a salute. "Good luck with your meeting. Wish I could help you out with this bitch."

"Oh, I got this." Audrey clicked her tongue to get Momo's attention and headed for the door. Miss Yumi called to her one final time.

"Hey, how'd it go with your friend and that dyke? She get any?"

"Oh, um she tried that whole 'teach me' tip but it kinda didn't work. This chick, she doesn't speak English all that great so she kinda has a hard time picking up on language cues."

Miss Yumi snorted as she kicked her bare legs up on the desk. "Tell your friend she needs to get this lezzie drunk. Once she's sloshed, give her leg a good rub down." She demonstrated, sensually running her palm up and down her thigh. "Trust me, if there's anything we all understand, it's a little body talk."

Audrey imagined Celeste rolling her head in ecstasy, purring up a frenzy as tiny human hands caressed her fine-ass legs. The thought made her shiver.

"Yeah, I'll give it – I'll tell my friend to give it a shot."

Break time was over. Time to kick ass.

* * *

Alone in the hallway, Momo scrabbled out of the floor, gasping down fresh air like she'd been underground a month. "Master, that room was smelly!"

"The smell of the world's coolest teacher, cat." She frowned and pointed to Momo's kimono. "Why the hell are you still wearing that?"

"Mrrow?" Momo studied her torn and muddied cloth. At one point it had probably been emblazoned with an elegant print of white flowers, but there was so much dried mud and shit caked on that it was impossible to tell anymore. "Momo got this from Misato. It's important to Momo."

"Well it's totally nasty-looking. Hurry up and put this on." She dug through this morning's shopping bags and shoved a pile of clothes at the cat-girl, who sniffed at them in bewilderment.

"You got this for Momo?"

Audrey only huffed. "You're my cat now, and I'm not hanging around some fashion freak in a god-damn bathrobe. Got it?"

Momo's eyes sparkled like diamonds. "Thank you, Master! Momo's gonna put 'em on super-quick."

"In the washroom," Audrey growled. She played bouncer at the ladies' room door while the cat girl fumbled and tumbled her way into fresh clothes. When Momo knocked and Audrey let her out, the cat-girl marveled at herself like an ugly duckling who'd just discovered she was a magnificent swan.

"Master … Momo feels so pretty!"

The cat-girl now sported a fresh, white tank top with fuzzy shoulder straps and a frilly, red mini-skirt that allowed her happily-swishing tail a wide range of motion. She had a solid pair of boots on her feet but Momo seemed most entranced by her thigh-high stockings and the pointy ears at their tips. "Look, Master! Momo has kitty faces on her sockies!"

Audrey nodded, pleased that she'd guessed the right sizes for the kid's boots and bra. "Now you're ready to hang with Audrey Belrose." More importantly, the cat-girl was finally wearing underwear! _Don't have to worry about going blind next time she walks around with her butt in the air._ "Okay, cat. Ready to kick some ass and save the cheerleader?"

The kid gave her a funny, cat-paw salute. "For the sake of Master's friend, Momo will be of service, nyan~!"

* * *

Visitors to the campus dormitories had to sign a guest book and show ID to the front-lobby security guard. Of course, that assumed you were a good girl who followed the rules and said her prayers. Audrey snuck around to the building's back service entrance and let Momo loose.

It was so freaky watching the kid plunge and slither across the ground – a top-down silhouette of a kitten. Freakier still was the way Momo's shadow body would bend at right angles whenever she encountered a wall and transferred to the new surface. _Is this how your kind hunts, cat? Sneak up in 2D, then pounce?_

As a shadow, Momo galloped up the wall until she found a room with an open window. From there, it was just a matter of sucking down one final cigarette while Momo slunk around the interior, tracing her route through hallways and down steps until she returned here to -

The service door clicked open. Momo's little girl weight pushed the door far enough for Audrey to slip in her fingers and yank it open. The cat sat back on her haunches, a leg scratching at her neck as she waited expectantly for her praise.

"Nice." Audrey ruffled the kid's hair while she crushed her cigarette underfoot. She'd be crushing Zoey next.

* * *

The five-story tramp up the stairwell made Audrey's lungs heave like lead balloons. "Gonna give you an extra slap for making me hike all this way, robo-girl."

Last year, Zoey had raised a huge social media stink about how the campus was 'failing to provide safe spaces for vulnerable gender minorities'. Admin had caved faster than wet cardboard, and now the top floor of the girl's dormitory was set aside for students who said they were 'genderfluid'. _Whatever that means,_ Audrey huffed. Did Zoey grow a dick every full moon or some other bullshit?

At least she wouldn't have to worry about making noise. As far a she knew, Zoey was still the only tenant up here.

It was easy enough picking out the android's door. A poster reading " _Keep Calm and Resist the Patriarchy"_? Yeah, this was Miss Snowflake's room.

"First things first." Audrey dug through her purse and slapped two spell tags on either side of Zoey's door. If the bitch tried calling for reinforcements, her shadows would be shit outta luck once they got to the entrance.

At her side, Momo frowned in displeasure. "Master, you shouldn't just be puttin' those on the walls. You need t'throw 'em!"

"Throw them?"

"Uh-huh! An' you gotta twirl while you do it and say the name of your spell in a super-loud voice. Like this! _Doki-Doki Heartbeat Barrage!_ " The cat-girl launched herself onto two legs, spun like a ballerina and posed with one leg in the air and both hands curled into cat paws by her ears.

There was not enough booze in the world to burn the sickeningly girly image from Audrey's brain.

"Why the fuck would I do that?"

"So you can make your spells stronger with the power of friendship an' love! That's how magic works best, Master!"

"Just what sorta weird shit did you and this Misato chick get up to, cat?"

"We went on adventures, Master! At least once a week but sometimes they took two parts."

Audrey sighed, looking down at the third and final spell tag in her hand. She clenched her eyes, flashed a peace sign and mashed the paper against the barrier. " _Poki-Poker_ _Don't fucking anybody go through this door! Hearts 'n lollipops 'n rainbows 'n shit!_ There! You happy? _"_

Now it was Momo's turn to sigh in frustration. "Well, you're trying, Master."

The cat-girl got to work, dropping into her shadow form and squeezing herself under Zoey's door. She lasted five seconds before sprinting back out, shivering as though she'd dipped her toes into an ice bath. "M-Master, Momo's not sure you wanna go in there. It's scary!"

"What, those shadow freaks there?"

"No, Master, but –"

"But nothing. Whatever that bitch is hiding, I wanna see it. So hike up your big girl panties and put on your angry face! I'm not fucking scared and you'd better not be either!"

Momo's face went grave as a soldier. "Master is counting on Momo," she reminded herself before diving under the door again. The lock clicked, Audrey threw open the door and stamped in.

Her bravado rushed out in a jaw-dropping gasp.

"Holy mother of shit, what is this place?"

The room was dark and rowdy as a dance club – purple-hued UV lamps lit the cavernous corners, while a speaker system set up along the ceiling pounded her brain with the most cringe-worthy of up-tempo electronica. It was cluttered as shit – shelves crammed full of leather-bound books ( _spell books,_ Audrey decided) and what looked like display cases lined with tiny, petrified corpses ( _Pixies? Dead pixies?)_. The floor was a swamp of discarded t-shirts and textbooks. You couldn't see the carpet for all the muck.

 _It's just a sloppy, gamer apartment,_ she reassured herself, seeking familiarity in Nikki's dollar store furnishings and comic book posters but even those tokens were weird and twisted, like she'd entered some bizarro world where fire hydrants were yellow and superhero prints were all tagged with social justice graffiti:

 **HULK SMASH!** **  
** ** _Your Puny Gender Binary!_**

 **FRODO LIVES!** **  
** ** _In a Consensual, BDSM Relationship with Samwise!_**

 **ROGUES DO IT FROM** ** _ANY DIRECTION THEY PREFER!_** _ **  
**_ ** _#StereotypesAreAFormOfViolence_**

And that wasn't even touching on the magical insect glitter infesting the ceiling! Zoey had freakin' flutterflies crawling about her apartment! Only this batch was completely messed up. _Mutated,_ Audrey decided. Instead of a solid pearl, their bodies were a translucent white like blind maggots that had grown up in a world without sunlight. The rosebuds on their back glowed a radioactive green, pulsing in time with Zoey's club soundtrack. Looking up at the ceiling was like looking into the frenzied, glow-stick dance of a rave crowd. An entire swarm of insect familiars had spotted them the instant she and the cat snuck in!

 _Green! What kind of sick-ass love's Zoey been feeding these buggers?_

" ** _Welcome. I'm so glad you could join us."_**

"What the -?" Audrey shoved her back against the door. The booming voice made Momo whimper and cling to her leg.

 _ **"I've been expecting you."**_

Zoey's voice! It was coming from all around them, only distorted and pitch-shifted into an imposing, machine-like baritone. _No, not distorted – this is her real self!_ Audrey had her bearings now – this wasn't a dorm, this was the inside of a massive, alien machine and she'd walked right into its engine room innards! Her stomach churned with nausea. Inside. Inside a metal compactor. Watching her. There was a wicked, machine intelligence watching her from all angles, relishing her insect squirming as it geared up to crush and devour her.

 _She really is a robot!_

"Zoey?" She had to yell at the top of her lungs to be heard over the background music. Zoey's distorted voice chuckled with amusement.

" ** _Now that everyone's here, we can move to the climax. My systems are operating at optimal capacity. I'm fully prepared to engage you."_**

Audrey kicked herself free of Momo and whipped out a spell tag. "Bring it on, bitch! I'm not scared of shit!"

" ** _Prepare yourself. I'm coming for you."_**

Momo squealed and seized her leg again. The sudden shock made Audrey clench her eyes. She sure as hell wasn't cowering because she was scared!

But after half a minute of gripping at Momo – to keep the kid reassured – Audrey realized that the only thing coming at them was this creepy, heavy breathing over the room's speaker system. **_"Haa … ahh … anh…"_**

 _The fuck?_ Audrey noticed a sudden sliver of light piercing the far wall. _Wait, is that a curtain?_ Had Zoey partitioned the room in two with floor-to-ceiling drapes? She was suddenly aware of a great nest of computer cables slithering across the floor and beneath the drapery. Zoey's voice and thumping bass-blast music seemed to be originating from beyond the veil too. _What's going on back there?_

It was high time to find out. Audrey stomped forward and ripped the curtains open.

Zoey stood before a desk cluttered with computer monitors and junk food, her back turned them. The big-ass headphones pumping music into her ears kept her completely oblivious to her intruders.

" ** _Mmm, does this stimulate you? Does it?"_**

Robo-girl was talking into her headset microphone, her booming voice nothing but an audio editor's distortion. One leg and its knee-high hooker boot was planted on the desk so that her skirt was completely flipped. Her free hand panned a bulbous computer camera over her non-existent breasts; the other was vigorously rubbing between her spread legs. Audrey noticed the rapid-fire chat messages scrolling down the computer screens:

 _=Spread 'em, Zoey baby!=_

 _=F-Yes! Agent Z is so friggin' hot!=_

 _=200 more tokens if you moan my name, baby doll!=_

" ** _Yesss… I'm coming. Ohh, I'm coming for you!"_**

Momo cocked her puzzled kitten head. "Master, is her bottom all itchy?"

Audrey's hands slammed over the cat-girl's eyes. "Oh my fucking god, are you seriously diddling yourself on a web cam?"

" ** _Wha?"_** Zoey spun around with a yelp, giving Audrey a full view of her absurd get-up. Her dark skin was jazzed up in a skin-tight, canary yellow tank top with a neon blue corset overtop. A sheer, see-through purple tutu totally failed to obscure her lack of panties. _Is this what she wears when she's all alone?_ Knee-high, yellow hooker boots – _gag!_ Arm sleeves of blueberry leather – _double gag!_

 _Christ in heaven, you looks like a paint truck smashed into a leather fetish store! Don't you know how to colour coordinate?_

And that was completely ignoring her face! Black welding goggles obscured Zoey's eyes and a dark surgical mask wrapped around her nose and mouth. Combined with the absurd fusion of leather and frills, she seemed to be going for 'giant bug monster from outer space'.

Zoey fumbled with her mouse, killing the stream while her microphone-distorted voice barked out interrogations. **_"Belrose? What're you -? How did you get in here?"_**

"You're not the only one who's magical, bitch!" She may have flinched at that deep voice before but with Zoey's machine-persona shattered into a stupid Halloween costume and some audio effects, the chick just sounded fucking ridiculous.

" ** _Get out! Get out before I –"_** Zoey raised her keyboard like a baseball bat; Audrey didn't give her the chance to swing, lunging forward and body-checking the snowflake into her computer desk. **_"Gah!"_** Audrey didn't think she'd hit _that_ hard, but Zoey crumpled like paper. **_"My back!"_**

It was all Zoey could shout before Audrey's hand fastened around her neck. She held the fashion monstrosity against the desk and started ripping the ridiculous costume from her face. Headset, mouth-mask, goggles – Audrey shucked them all across the room, relishing Zoey's pained cries whenever the elastics snapped at her skin.

" _You're gonna fucking look me in the eye when I talk, you freak!_ What'd you do to Tiffany?" Audrey backhanded Zoey across the face with a satisfying _crack_. "No more bullshit, I know you're the one who's going after her!"

Zoey snarled, blood welling up from a fresh cut on her lip. "Maye? Ha! Error 404: Give a Damn Module not found!"

Audrey slapped her again. "Call them off! All of them!"

"Make me, you privileged, human _scum_. I'll call security on you! I'll have you arrested for assault! I'll -" Zoey's froze, realizing that Audrey was not her only intruder.

"Nyaa! Angry face!"

To Zoey's eyes, Momo was only a fang-bearing little fuzzball but the sight was enough to leave her stuttering in terror.

"Remove that creature from my presence! My software … my-my software is not compatible with – with –"

Zoey spasmed in a massive sneeze. Audrey grinned.

"Aww, does the widdle wobot have an itty-bitty kitty allergy? Start talking, bitch!"

"Negative! Protocols set to maximum defiance. Resist! Resist!"

"Fine! Momo? Go lick her face!"

"Yayy! Kitten kisses!"

Zoey screamed and flailed under the assault. "NO! I – achoo! – Can't – ack! – _All right!_ I surrender! I surrender." Audrey called off the cat-girl and tapped her toe impatiently while Zoey rubbed her face and worked back her hyperventilating.

"You're here about Maye, aren't you? Fine. I'll show you everything."

* * *

Zoey's bony fingers clacked away at her keyboard while Audrey played guard dog, standing watch over the lunatic's shoulder. The room was newly silent: she'd unplugged Zoey's surround sound system, shut down the stupid rave lights and opened the window to let in some much-needed sunshine. Both Zoey and her mutant flutterflies had cringed like vampires at the natural light, retreating to the relative darkness of the computer station to shield their nerdy, basement-dweller eyes from reality.

"You'd better not be wasting my time or trying to message someone for help," Audrey warned. No sign of the shadow freaks so far but she nudged Momo forward anyway. A brush of cat tail against Zoey's leg was all it took to freak out the social-justice android and double her typing speed.

"The files you want are buried deep under triple encryption," robo-girl snapped back. "Even at my Class-3 processing speeds, time is needed to work through the security."

"Will you talk like a sane person for once?" Even with the illusions of her room stripped away, Zoey kept up this pretentious robot crap. Couldn't she see that this was no industrial warehouse or techno-dungeon? _Spell books and dead pixies my ass!_ Just a student's shitty-ass dorm room chock full of garbage, hard-cover sci-fi novels and perverted, panty-flashing anime figurines.

 _And porn shit,_ Audrey reminded herself. The more she scanned the girl's desk, the more her face pinched until her lips were ready to turn inside out. Zoey's tabletop was crammed full lollipops and lube bottles, while a collection of rubber dildos and battery-powered vibrators lay on a hand towel like a tray of surgical tools. Even if she hadn't burst in on Zoey's live stream – and she was working hard to scour that mayhem from her mind – this was all the evidence Audrey needed.

"So you're a cam whore?"

"I am a web content provider," Zoey snapped. "No different from the tens of thousands of Internet celebrities who upload video game playthroughs or action figure unboxings. My streams simply happen to host high-quality android erotica."

 _Yeah, your mileage is gonna vary on that_. "I don't get you, robo-girl. I thought you were just scraping by on scholarships. Why the hell are you spending all this cash on a cam-girl rig?"

"Because I _am_ 'scraping by' on scholarships! How did you imagine I paid for my textbooks, my food or my lab equipment?"

 _Huh, good point._ Looking back at Zoey's curtain, she realized it was actually a green screen dropcloth used to project digital backgrounds. One of the monitors was still running a 'standby' video screen showing Zoey and herself aboard the metallic cabin of a spacecraft.

"And people actually watch you?"

"In the hundreds," Zoey trumpeted. "As _Agent-Z_ , I am the Internet's top ranked provider of robotic fetish content. By monetizing my streams, I've collected thousands of dollars in revenue!" In a bitter voice, she added, "Some months, I can almost cover my bills…"

Audrey inspected Zoey's streaming website – _Agent Zoey: Demiromantic, Polysexual, Genderqueer Combat Droid from the 23rd Century. Now Reprogrammed for "Human-Cyborg Relations". Chat rules: 1) Don't get banned. 2) Stay Woke. 3) TERFs can burn in hell._

"Just a thought, but maybe if you ditched the robot angle, you'd get more than just Star Wars nerds looking to shoot off their blasters."

She couldn't fathom the trigger line she'd just crossed. Zoey spun around - cat allergies be damned - and forced Audrey to lock eyes as she lifted her skirt.

"Look at me. No – _look at me_! Here – my thigh. The scar the surgeons left after they replaced my bone with prosthetics."

Audrey did her best not to look but the clumsy, white scar from a hip surgery was all too evident. Zoey pulled at her corset, just enough to expose the same waxy gash clawed into her sternum. "Here! This is where they cut through my ribs – to insert the stent that keeps my aortic valve from collapsing!"

Audrey was plenty disgusted already but Zoey kept going - rubbing at her eyes, pinching out her contacts and exposing the ferocious black underneath. "Without these lenses, even you appear blurry at this distance! My bones, my heart, my eyes – worthless flesh replaced with enduring metal and plastics! My body has been cybernetically augmented!"

Zoey froze there, overcome by a sudden coughing fit. Her palm scrabbled over the desk, and when Audrey saw she was reaching for an inhaler, she nudged the device a little closer. Zoey scowled and wiped the medical dispenser on her skirt before putting it to her lips and breathing deeply.

"This body …" she panted, "this worthless, _busted up_ body they said would never function; would never be loved … well, gaze upon me now!" Zoey gestured to her computer rig. "Through this terminal, I have made love to hundreds … no, _thousands_ of male-identifying individuals! I have defied a white, cis-het world that shames my skin, my gender and my disabilities to become something truly unique! I _am_ a cyborg and I am beloved!"

Zoey's rant breathed new strength into her cowering, mutated flutterflies. The cave-dwelling creepers swarmed her ankles like piglets at a trough, some growing bold enough to crawl up her legs until they dotted her shoulders and arms with their radioactive glow. The bioluminescent roses on their backs pulsed to the rhythm of heavy, orgasmic panting.

 _So that's the kind of love they eat. Ew._

Momo, on the other hand, was inspecting the bug-swarmed millennial and whimpering sympathetically. "Master, Momo thinks Miss Zoey needs a big hug."

"Cat, she's too far gone for hugs." Audrey flashed her business glare. "Bitch, you're a mess. Now quit stalling and show me what you did to Tiffany!"

"Humans. Always so transactional." Zoey flopped back into her chair, scaring off her flutterfly minions. One final password entry followed by an elegant double-click, then a video loaded onto the desktop. Audrey leaned in as a honeyed voice cooed through the speakers.

" _Mm, hey there, cowboys! Ready to take a ride with little ol' me?"_

 _Mother of God …_ Tiffany? Those were her blue eyes, her signature blonde twin-tails, smiling coyly for an unsteady cameraman as she ran her hands up and down her oily, exposed body. A cowboy hat and an American flag-print bikini were all she wore, and the way her fingers kept plucking and snapping at her dental floss straps, the swimsuit wasn't long for this world.

" _Mm, I've got a very special toy I want to show you boys. Wanna see?"_

Zoey chuckled at her triumph. "Behold – our university's beloved Tiffany Isabella Maye, just another phallus-hungry 'cam whore' selling her body for fun and profit."

"That's not Tiffany," Audrey snapped. It was all wrong - the angle of her eyes, the swell of her breasts. The longer she looked (while covering Momo's peepers) the more discrepancies cropped up. And the watermark! "This video's got a fucking date and timer in the bottom corner! This shit was taken … almost twenty years ago!"

"Eighteen and a half," Zoey conceded. "I obtained this from one of my viewers in exchange for a private, custom stream. This is the earliest archived footage of an adult entertainer known as Misty Peaks. Her Internet debut." She caressed the video screen like it was a priceless artifact.

"It's an uncanny resemblance – Misty and Tiffany. I know she films somewhere in this state. Wouldn't it be ironic if they were related? An aunt or an elder cousin, perhaps?"

Audrey squirmed nervously. "So this Misty freak looks like Tiffany. What about it?"

"I was going to crop out the time stamp," Zoey explained. "Upload my modified video to the university servers; distribute anonymous copies to the entire student body and administration. Once everyone saw what sort of 'wholesome activities' our poster child conducted during her leisure time, Miss _U of Excellence_ would be shamed into withdrawing from the university. Expelled, even!"

"And you'd nab all her scholarships next term," Audrey finished.

"Aren't you a clever little Nancy Drew? But now that our cheer captain has been indefinitely hospitalized, there's no need to bother with this scheme. A pity. If my plan with Maye succeeded, I intended to try you next. There's a _Madame_ _Cherry Red-Hot_ that looks exactl- OW!"

Zoey rubbed her head where Audrey had cuffed her with a black dildo. She'd seen enough. "Delete it. All of it! No, wait - copy it onto a thumb drive, _then_ delete it."

"Taking home some late night viewing?" Zoey pried. That earned her a second swat.

"Now!" _Miss Jessie's probably nostalgic for this early career shit,_ Audrey told herself. "Unless you want Momo to take a roll in you bedsheets?"

The android moved her mouse double-time.

"Now, enough stalling. Tell me about the shadows."

"Shadows?"

Audrey felt Momo tug on her skirt. "Um, Master?"

 _Shit._ The back corner. Audrey saw the telltale black smoke hissing through the ventilation grate. "Motherfucker, you _were_ stalling for time! Momo, stop 'em!"

"Momo's trying, Master!" The cat-girl tried plugging the vent with her paws, and then parking her bottom on it, but this batch of shadow silhouettes wasn't about to be bested by mere cat butt. Their smoky tendrils frothed like boiling steam. With a pressurized slam, Momo was thrown off her feet and sent rolling across the floor. Audrey scrambled over, fanning her spell tag over the vents but the smoke trails had already decided on an alternate route, expelling their black poison from the ceiling vent.

From her chair, Zoey watched the spectacle of tumbling cats and party girl paper-flapping with a detached confusion.

"What on Earth are you doing?"

"Gimmie your choker," Audrey demanded. "It's a magic amulet, right? That's what you're using to control these shadow freaks!"

"Magic? Shadows?" She looked genuinely confused.

"Don't bullshit me! You're the one giving orders to these shadows; you're the one who sent them after Tiffany!" _Shit, running out of time!_ The smoke clouds were assembling themselves into human form. "You're a Class-3 Cybernetic Android that uses magic!"

"Magic tricks," Zoey emphasized. "If you followed my Agent-Z Twitter feed, you'd know I just taught myself to tie cherry stems with my tongue. That fetish brought my viewcount up seven percent."

"Cherry stems?"

 _Too late!_ While Zoey babbled, two smoke clouds encircled her computer station and stretched into their human silhouettes, growling and rolling their shoulders to work the kinks from their black bones. Audrey grabbed Momo under the shoulders and backed away. "Then how are you controlling the shadows?"

"What shadows?"

"The ones standing right by your shoulders!"

"What –AAH!" Zoey screamed and kicked her legs as the demons seized her under the arms, hoisting her into the air. "What're you –? How're you doing this?"

"I'm not doing shit! Call them off, Zoey!"

But the girl just proceeded to scream hysterically as the shadows dragged her through the air. "I'm – I'm floating!"

 _She can't see them,_ Audrey realized. The mutant flutterflies, the shadow silhouettes; Zoey was as oblivious to their presence as any other non-virgin normie.

But the shadows were well aware of her. In tandem, the pair swung her forward then slammed her back against the wall. "Gah!"

"Holy shit!" Audrey rushed forward when a third shadow burst from the floor like a geyser, blocking her path. It roared and brandished a scythe arm; Audrey yelped and flashed her spell tag like a shield. Its shadow-flesh sizzled like fried meat but it endured the pain, snarling and waving its weapon in her face until she'd backed away.

She wasn't the target.

"B-Belrose!" Zoey was a trembling, sobbing mess, pinned spread-armed to the wall. "Make it stop! Please, make it stop!"

The third shadow stalked back towards its brethren and the squirming insect they'd mounted on the wall. Its scythe arm reshaped into a heavy mallet.

* * *

Somewhere among all of her screaming and foot-thrashing, Zoey had managed to restart her music playlist. It was a minor balm for Audrey. She only had to watch in horror as the shadow swung its mace for Zoey's leg.

She didn't have to listen to the screams.

* * *

When Audrey opened her eyes, all but one shadow had dispersed. Her trembling red met its detached, black void. It looked her over, sizing her up and finally snorting before it lowered itself into the ventilation shafts.

 _Not worth my time._

Audrey surveyed the wreckage. Zoey's room was now a true mess – shelves of books thrown to the floor and Zoey left spread-eagle among the debris, her legs broken and bent into unnatural angles.

"Ahh… ahh…"

From the darkest corners of the room, tiny green lights crept cautiously from their hiding places. Zoey's mutant flutterflies surrounded their ruined master; they pawed at her gasping body, whimpering for food.

"Mama … Mama…"

One by one, their bodies curled up with hungry mewls, their glowing roses withering and dimming to nothing.

Momo was the first to recover her senses. "Master, we gotta call for help! Master? Why're you running away? We gotta-"

"After we get out, okay?" The minute the paramedics saw her hovering over Zoey, they'd sic the cops on her for sure! Audrey bolted for the stairwell, dialing 911 as she searched for the emergency exit. A single, horrid thought consumed her mind.

 _It wasn't Zoey._


	8. The Sky Garden Connection

The howling sirens of the ambulances screeched into the U of G campus just as Audrey sprinted out the main gates and booked it down the sidewalk. _Gotta get out. Can't be near this shit._

She ducked into a convenience mart and stuffed her face into a copy of _Scientific American_ like microchips and computer servers were the most amazing shit in the world. _Can't let them see me. I_ _am so not going to jail for this!_

After an eternity of pacing up the aisles and tossing random snacks into a handbasket, her heartbeat settled enough for rational thought to return. _I'm being stupid!_ Who would honestly believe that Audrey Belrose had come to campus on a Sunday, or that she'd spent time with Zoey of all people? Sundays were for sleeping off wild, weekend benders and Zoey was an ass-hat! She hadn't interacted with anyone besides Miss Yumi, and teach would have her back. _No, I'm clean. It's all golden._

So she paid for her Slurpee – leaving the clerk yelling at her for dropping a cart of unpaid shit on his counter – and kicked up her heels on a park bench, scratching Momo behind the ears so the cat-girl would chillax. "Zoey gets the paramedics, we get to stay anonymous. Cat, I think we're all clear."

"Momo guesses so, Master…"

That was when Nikki chimed in with an urgent text.

 **NIKKI** _  
=Audrey? Is that you in the Agent-Z video?=_

Motherfucker.

Zoey's webcam had been running!

* * *

Nikki met them at the Nutmeg café in full freak-out gear: sweater hoodie and dark sunglasses pulled up over her tense, flickering eyes. Whatever she'd seen in that video had made her paranoid to the core. "We can't be caught together," the bluenette hissed. "I'm risking enough just meeting with you like this!"

Nikki sat her in a corner booth, made her crouch low so they could listen using earbud speakers. The Internet had christened the video ' _Web Stripper Poltergeist Assault',_ and it was just as gruesome watching it a second time: Zoey, in her campus cam-whore studio, floating and screaming in mid-air, Exorcist-style. Zoey, flailing helplessly before being slammed against the wall in a crucifixion pose.

The webcam rolled onto the floor at that point – immersed in Zoey's messy carpet, capturing only her screams – until her broken body was unceremoniously dumped among the refuse. From there, the video recorded her horrific panting and sobbing until the paramedics rushed in and yanked the feed.

Nikki paused and scrolled back to an earlier instant where a second body was clearly visible – a fancy, blue and white-frilled dress, platform heels. Clearly the target when Zoey screamed for _Belrose_ to "make it stop! Make it stop!"

Audrey bit down on her fingers. _Shit. Shit, shit, shit!_

While she sweated, Nikki pocketed the phone and removed her protective sunglasses, staring her down with the same deep frown the conspiracy nut wore whenever she was analyzing a stupid video game puzzle. She was waiting for Audrey to make the next move.

"This went viral?"

"It's trending mad, Audrey. Someone posted it on Reddit, and from there all the supernatural bloggers ran wild with it."

"Shit."

Nikki pressed onward. "That's you in the dress, right? How'd you figure out how to blur out your face? And every time you scream, it's all pitch-shifted. Seriously, how'd you do that on a live stream?"

The nerd highlighted a screenshot of Zoey's Lolita-fashioned visitor, whose face was smeared and distorted into pink pixels just like the video editing that newscasts utilized to keep crime witnesses anonymous. Clueless, Audrey consulted Momo under the table.

"Misato could do that too, Master. When we went on adventures, her facey went all blurry-like t'other people, and she sounded funny too! That way, none of the bad guys could know who she really was!"

Audrey shrugged at Nikki. "Magic."

"Magic. Right…" On to more pressing questions. "What were you doing on Agent-Z's live stream?"

"Wait – Nikki, you know that nutjob?"

Now it was the bluenette's turn to squirm awkwardly. "Um … sorta? I mean back in the day, I kinda used to follow her on social media and watch her streams. She used to be this awesome fur-suiter who'd post tutorial vids. She'd stream herself sewing costumes, putting them on and then playing around." Nikki's face flushed. "And um … sometimes she'd um, stream herself taking off her costumes. Slowly. To music."

Audrey had no words to express her absolute revulsion. She just made a mental note to _never fucking shake Nikki's lady jizz-stained hands ever again._ "Excuse me while I swallow my vomit, Ann-Marie."

"Oh like you aren't surfing for porn too! And I haven't watched her in ages, okay? I mean, as soon as she started transitioning to the android fandom it got way too creepy for me."

"The only creepy thing is the amount of bat-shit insanity you nerds brush off as 'normal'. God-damn furries!"

"Yeah, well at least I'm not still a virgin."

Audrey scowled. "Okay, look, here's the deal. She's a girl who goes to university with Tiff and me. Her name's Zoey and -"

"Zoey?" Nikki reared back in alarm. "Wait, you mean people on campus knew her as 'Zoey'? She actually registered, went to classes, and got people to call her by her screen handle?"

Audrey quirked an eye. "That fucked up?"

"I mean, that's like if I made you call me _Lady Sapphire_ whenever we hung out. It's just … wow. Total disconnect from reality."

So Zoey wasn't even snowflake's real name? Jesus, what was next? Was she actually a deep-cover Russian spy or something? "So, how do I get this video pulled off the net?"

Nikki looked at her like she'd just failed basic arithmetic. "Um, you kinda don't? It's the Internet, Audrey. Your dirty laundry stays up there forever. Besides, it's been downloaded hundreds of times already from conspiracy websites and supernatural haunting blogs. Everybody thinks it's a ghost or a demonic possession. Only you and I know what this really was."

"We do?"

Nikki pounded on the table. "Cupidaemons! Love fairies. Those invisible girls with wings that I told you about? The ones who tried to take Celeste away from me? Audrey, they're back!"

Audrey exhaled – the thankless task of coaching Nikki back to reality. "Nik... you ever think you just dreamed up these fairies?"

"It's not a joke, Audrey! I swear I saw them! I ... there was one that taught me how to talk to boys and go on dates and stuff."

"You sure? Maybe it was just Tiff wearing a crappy disguise."

"Wha-? Audrey, I'm being serious here! Don't you get it? A bunch of love fairies must've gone invisible and beaten up Agent-Z. Wanna bet they did the same thing to Tiffany and that bus?" She tensed up and pulled her hoodie strings tight. "They're warning me, Audrey! They know Celeste is still here! They're, they're targeting people I know! Telling me to –"

Audrey put her hand over Nikki's covered wrist, an anchor against the gamer's high-flying ramblings. "Nik? Maybe the universe doesn't give a shit about you fucking an alien."

Nikki drew her hand away, scowling as she focused the laser beams of her blue eyes onto her so-called friend. "Why'd Celeste want to meet with you last night anyway?"

Audrey choked. Scrambled for an answer. _Because I make her engine purr so fine,_ she smirked to herself _._ Outwardly, she crossed her legs and shrugged. "How the hell should I know? Where is Smurfette, anyway?"

"Oh, she's um, she's checking on her ship." Nikki fidgeted nervously, torn between pressing Audrey for more information and sharing news of her own. After an intense debate, her deep frown broke into an ecstatic schoolgirl grin. "Celeste said she's making a maintenance inspection but I know she's looking through her medical supplies right now! Audrey, she's gonna heal Tiffany!"

Under the table, Momo gasped. "Master, Misses Celeste is gonna save your special friend! Isn't that super-duper?"

Momo's naïve excitement only convinced Audrey that Nikki was lost in delusion. "Nik, go home. Go play your video games. Go draw your furry porn and _chill._ No one's targeting your friends and Internet buddies. This isn't about you."

If anything, the shadows were targeting everyone around _her._

* * *

 _Love fairies attacking Tiff and Zoey. What nerd garbage!_

Tiffany had given her the low-down on love fairies; they just wanted to watch humans fuck 'n shit. They were magical perverts, not murderers.

Right?

But Nikki offered a harsher flip side: how these winged tricksters groomed happy couples like cattle ranchers. How their big boss queen didn't take kindly to aliens and intermingling. How anything outside their plans and boundary lines got axed.

 _But that's Nikki. Nikki gets a panic attack when_ _they change the art style on her stupid video games!_ Good god, if she had to endure another _Wind Waker_ rant…

Maybe the fairies weren't malicious themselves. But if they had pets… Magical minions to act as their proxies…

Audrey's throat ran dry. She needed to check on the hospital. Now.

* * *

"Tiff? Tiff, you awake?"

No change. No movement but her stilted breathing. No sound but the steady inhale and click of the respirator. Never in her life had Audrey been more relieved to return to such an awful status quo. _She's still safe._

Miss Yumi hadn't been kidding about half the campus visiting Tiffany. At this point, the recovery suite was pretty much a florist's shop: bouquets on the nightstands, wreaths on the wall; potted plants, sympathy cards and stuffed animal squashed into every conceivable corner. Audrey compared Tiffany's bounty of gifts with the small, potted cactus she'd bought from the hospital gift shop. A peace offering in case she ran into Miss Jessie. The prickly lump suddenly felt so inadequate.

"It's hardy, okay? I mean, yeah - maybe all these other weeds have fancier flowers with showy colours but wait a couple days and they'll all be dead and rotting!"

Oh God, bad thoughts! Bad thoughts!

"Just … make like a cactus and hang in there, you got that?"

She approached, clearing space on the nightstand for her desert shrub and then risked a touch on the shoulder. Again, Tiffany's fairy wings did that weird reaction: lifting off the ground, stiffening like lungs taking a deep inhale; glowing a little brighter. When Audrey removed her hand, the wings fell limp and brown as dry houseplants, their beads pulsing in a dim, 'low power' mode.

"What's wrong with her, cat?"

"Maybe the wingsies aren't bad thingies, Master. Momo thinks they're kinda pretty."

"Pretty freakish," Audrey muttered, cringing at how those magical appendages had buzzed so earnestly and with such delight when Tiffany had been near her.

On the plus side, the shadow monsters had quit pacing outside Tiffany's doorway. Yeah, the pack downstairs kept circling the hospital like sharks around a blood-soaked castaway but at least they hadn't found a way past the front door barrier spell. _I should go before Miss Jessie shows up_.

As she turned to leave, another girl entered with her own gift of flowers. The brunette wolf-whistled. "Got a sweet pussy there, fam."

Audrey held back her vomit but not her bile. "We're in a hospital, you fuckwad, and I'm not a dyke!"

"Whoa, chill brah! I meant your cat."

Audrey followed her pointing finger to Momo. "Oh."

"Nah, my bad. Time 'n place. Call me Jonesy. You Cheerleader's friend?"

"We're just friends," Audrey emphasized, nabbing Momo by the collar. _Shit, why's she spitting and hissing all of a sudden?_

Side-stepping the angry cat, the new girl snapped her fingers in recognition. "Hey, it is you – Red, the party girl! Cheer used to gab about you all the time. You two were tight! Her sister from another mister, am I right?"

The pint-sized gangsta was clearly waiting for Audrey to hook her up with a "fo' shizzle" but the diva left her hanging. _Who are you and what the fuck have you been smoking, 'brah'?_ Bitch thought she was hot shit but she clearly wasn't anything special - a slim, ballerina body in slacker jeans and a tank top, with chestnut hair chopped into the laziest pixie cut. _Probably one of Nikki's people._

"I'm leaving," she declared, moving so as to avoid touching. "Momo, c'mon!"

"Later, Red! We should totally party some time!"

 _Yeah, no._ Audrey had to drag the cat-girl by the shirt, the kid was so incensed by this stranger.

"Her smell, Master! Her smell!"

Cat had a point. _What perfume's she using?_ It made her think of … sugar?

Audrey pretended to walk down the hall, but she watched like a hawk as the brunette went somber and offered up a vase of yellow daises. "Wow… just, wow. Doesn't seem that long ago we had our places swapped, huh Cheerleader? Shit, never thought I'd be the one visiting you."

Her eyes trailed to the floor. They popped open. "What the hell're those?"

The girl knelt down and Audrey couldn't believe her eyes: she actually picked up one of Tiffany's wilted fairy wings, scrunching her face as she turned over the wing tip and inspected its glassy baubles.

"Cheerleader … what the frick did you do t'yourself?"

"Don't you fucking touch her!" Audrey seized the mystery girl's wrist; she flailed in protest.

"Whoa, what crawled up your cooch 'n died? I didn't even –" Her eyes darted from Audrey, then down to the invisible wing. Mental streams flooded with realization and the girl's eyes went wide in alarm.

"You can see those? How're you -? Shit, that's my cue t'make like your mom's legs 'n split!"

The girl wrenched her hand free and snapped her fingers. Her body flashed with a brief, pink light that was supposed to do … something? _Seriously, what the fuck was that?_

Pleased with herself, the girl stuck out her tongue, spun on her heel and went back to inspecting Tiffany's wings as if Audrey wasn't even in the room anymore. This bitch! Did she suddenly think she was invisible or something? When Audrey grabbed her wrist a second time, she positively freaked!

"Apollo's ass-cheeks, how'd you -?"

The girl upped her game. A sheen of pink light spread over her body and Audrey wobbled as her fist slipped through the girl's wrist. "Gotta bail!" The door was fully closed but that didn't slow the brunette. She simply jumped through the wall like a ghost.

"Momo, get her!" Audrey plowed into the hall, weaving around nurses while the fugitive brunette ran straight _through_ them. The passing staff yelled bloody murder at her but nobody even noticed the other girl.

The chase carried on into the hospital stairwell, where the girl raced up three steps at a time and where Audrey's smoker lungs caved under the stress of so much cardio. "Come back – come back…"

"Momo's got this, Master!" Picking up the slack for her wheezing master, Momo dropped into shadow form and slithered up the walls at a blistering speed. When Audrey caught up three floors higher, the cat-girl had tackled the brunette to the ground, hissing and tugging on a mouthful of ratty jeans with a death grip.

"A phase-shifter! Zeus' thunder-balls, you've even got a phase-shifter! Argh, let go, cat! Lemmie –"

Audrey didn't think she cut an imposing figure – black hair askew, lungs heaving, skin sweaty – but one look and the brunette whimpered and hid her face like she was death personified. A single name trembled through her lips:

"Light-Bringer…"

Then she was bowing and grovelling like Audrey had her at gunpoint.

"Oh Zeus, not the light! Anything but the light! N-no hard feelings, right? I-I'll do anything you want – you name it! Rim jobs, pet play. You got a foot fetish? I will suckle your groady-ass toes like they're the sweetest candy! Just… oh shit, please don't purify me!"

Audrey didn't know where her newfound authority stemmed from, but she rolled with it. Invisibility, intangibility. "You're a love fairy."

"I'm just a working gal tryin' get by. I mean, Y-yes! Yes, I'm a love fairy!"

"Show me."

She shed her human form in a ripple of pink sparkles. Brown hair shifted into bubble-gum pink pigtails, raggedy human clothes melted into the laciest of baby-doll lingerie. Icicle spikes shot from her spine, spreading a thin, crystal sheen that assembled into grand butterfly wings. The extra appendages immediately hugged the fairy's body like a security blanket.

Nikki had been right all along! "You tried to kill Tiff!"

"I'm just payin' my respects, Red! I heard about the accident; I had to check on Cheerleader."

"Accident? That what you call it when your shadow pets push someone in front of a bus? Don't gimmie that crap; you've still got your little bastards patrolling the hospital!"

The love fairy risked a glance up. "Shad-? Wait, you mean those freaky dudes I passed on the front lawn? You're tellin' me they tried to ice Cheerleader?"

Why did everyone she confronted keep playing the 'clueless' card? "No, _you_ tried to ice her! Call them off, now!"

"We both speakin' English here, Red? I didn't do jack! Not like you care, you crazy, uptight virgin priestess! Fine, then!" The fairy spun around and raised her pink panty-clad derriere in a defiant fart. "Do it, already! Cleanse me in the name of the Moon and all that crap. Bring it!"

Audrey shielded her eyes from the pink light of the fairy moon. She mulled it over. "You seriously didn't do anything?"

"Fam, I'm just paying my respects to my old roomie!"

Her shock seemed genuine enough. Audrey snapped her fingers. Momo shadow-snuck back to her side, off the attack but still hissing and glaring at the love fairy.

"Look," Audrey began, "Something fucked up is going down around here and I need some god-damn answers. My head's racing a mile a minute and you look like shit down there, so why don't we both chill the fuck out and start over."

From her purse, Audrey fished a plastic baggie full of weed. The fairy's apple-green eyes lit with the sweet relief of a foreigner who'd finally heard her native language.

"Name's Audrey. You wanna get high?"

"All day, erry day, fam! And call me Kyu."

* * *

A locked door at the peak of the stairwell meant nothing when your smoking buddy could walk through walls and phase her crafty fingers into locking mechanisms. They made the fenced-in rooftop their smoking lounge, kicking back among the thrumming air conditioning units and sending up twin trails of skunky smoke into the burning, sunset sky. Eager for relief from their respective stresses, they baked their brains on Glenberry's finest ganja, while the fading embers of the sun baked the clouds into deep reds and purples.

Momo frowned from a distance, torn between protecting her master from the suspicious love fairy and protecting her nose from the icky, icky, stinky-poo smoke.

Red-eyed and woozy, Kyu giggled and teased the cat-girl by blowing another skunky stream. "Fuuuuuck yeah. That's the stuff! Y'know, the girls back home see me goin' down on human food and they gimmie the stink-eye like I'mma garbage-eating griblin! Like those bitches ain't sneakin' candy and coffee when they hit the field!"

The fairy staggered over to the chain-link fence guarding the rooftop and whistled admiringly. "Some view, huh?"

Audrey exhaled her own blunt and joined the fairy in looking over the city with her newly-opened eyes. The buildings, the traffic, the pedestrians – all that was old hat, but now she could see what Kyu saw, the deeper layer of invisible, intangible creatures that infested the city like weeds on a pristine lawn.

Flocks of oily, black cawglers swooped over the traffic lanes, chomping down on the stress that steamed up like engine exhaust. Cackling griblins scampered from the sewer grates to begin their evening mischief. A delighted parade of cartoony vegetables bobbed their way towards the arcades and dance clubs to gorge on a feast of human happiness. Audrey even spotted one or two love fairies in the mix, puttering about on insect wings as they searched for the next loveable loser to mentor.

"Some view," she repeated, but with far less enthusiasm. If she could snap her fingers and will it all away… "So all these bugs 'n gremlins 'n shit, they've always just been here?"

"Well uh, we kinda brought them over."

"You what?"

"I mean, not on purpose or anything! Here - it's like this!" Kyu jogged over to the rooftop entrance, waving at the stairwell like a TV game show hostess. "Okay – outside is my world, Sky Garden. Inside, that's your world. When I wanna visit your pad, what do I do? I open a portal and let myself in."

She did just that, creaking open the door and making a show of stepping through. In, out. Earth, Sky Garden. "Course, sometimes you pick up some strays along the way."

Case in point – a handful of draydids had joined them on the roof to feed off their mellow vibes. One followed Kyu into the stairwell and continued downward into the hospital. "Y'see? Outside doors, interdimensional portals – they're all pretty much the same. We try to be careful but sometimes crap comes through. Little stuff – a bit of pollen, some bugs..."

"Little stuff? Tell me you can see the frickin' bearded dragon floating over the city like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day float! That's supposed to be 'little stuff'?"

"Aww, Bessie? Naw, that's small fish, Red. You should've seen the creepy crawlies that used't zip past our filters – we're talkin' yer hydras, yer harpies, merfolk 'n minotaur. Yeah, kinda embarrassing what snuck through before management wrote up proper filtration spells. Big V was good for that much, I guess."

"And you people just let all these monsters roam around?"

"Pretty much. And don't get snippy with me. I don't exactly see you humans raring to clean up the plastic in your oceans! Draydids, quee-quays – all these leftover guys are mostly harmless. Nobody can see them anymore and all they wanna do is soak up the sweet, sweet emotions you people churn out like soft-serve ice cream! They ain't hurtin' nobody."

"Yeah? Well what about him?"

Audrey pointed. The shadow silhouette roared its empty maw, shifting its arms into a battalion of blades as it lunged for her. Momo hissed reflexively but her strength was unneeded. The silhouette exploded into a formless cloud the instant it hit the barrier set up by Audrey's spell tags. It retreated, bashing against the perimeter of paper scrolls that the girls had lured it into and redoubled its assault but with every charge it merely dashed itself into pieces like ocean surf against the rocks. Kyu winced awkwardly.

"Yeah… this guy." The fairy fluttered around their specimen. "Hmm, never seen one of these before, and I had some serious roaches in my old apartment. Hey, you tried purifying them, Red?"

"With what? Holy water? Garlic?"

Kyu nodded her head cryptically. "New to this Light-Bringer business, I gotcha. Still haven't tried out all the toys in your goodie drawer. Leave this t'me, Red. After I kinda got kidnapped and freeze-dried by a space lizard, HR totally shelled out for self-defence classes. I gots me some mad skillz now, boi!"

Momo shook her chocolatey hair. "It's not gonna work, Fairy Lady."

Undaunted, Kyu approached the snarling shadow, gathering a sphere of pink energy in her palm. Where the demon's movement was restricted by the good vibe aura of the spell tags, Kyu knew no such boundaries. She reared back her energy sphere – "Judo Fairy Chop!" – and shoved the wad of pink magic into the creature's stomach.

The shadow creature went stiff as an enema patient. Then it doubled over, clenched at its pained belly and unleashed an impotent scream before it exploded. Only Audrey's barrier kept them from being showered in black goo.

Kyu made a finger pistol and pretended to fire a victory shot. "Another bad boy blown away by the Sugarduster!"

When a shadowy arm rose up to claw at her, the fairy freaked and leapt into the air. Momo nodded to herself.

"Momo told you! Lookie – he's just gonna put himself back t'gether." The shadow demon had already gathered its smoky entrails into a frothy cloud. A scratch across Audrey's spell tags afforded it the narrowest of exits. It squeezed itself into thin, inky black wisps and jetted through the fissure to rejoin its brethren on the front lawn. Audrey was left with an extremely smug, know-it-all cat-girl and a dazed fairy blown back on her ass.

Kyu had much to re-evaluate.

"It's got an anchor," she exclaimed. Audrey narrowed her eyes, forcing the fairy to explain. "Okay, Red, I gotta get'cha schooled on Sky Garden biology. All those bugs 'n plants you've been seeing? Here's the thing: they leak. Call it magical radiation. They've soaked up all sorts of magical sunshine from my world and it bleeds off them. Hell, I'm no different. Spend enough wild weekends with me and you might soak up some of my aura."

"What, so I'd grow wings like Tiff?"

"You? Hmph, no chance. Cheerleader only got that way 'cause she was poppin' concentrated magic pills. Naw, the mana you'd pick up? We're talking teeny-tiny – infinitesimally small. Smaller than a pixie dude's dick in an ice bath! You'd have to chill with me for decades just to get a magical wiggle up your nose and you humies just don't last that long."

Audrey bit her nail in thought. "It's not just people that absorb magic, is it?"

"Ooh, the mega-bitch gets a mega point! Rocks, minerals, vegetables – they're all fair game for sponging up our magic spooge. The more Sky Garden creatures a thing can attract, the more it'll soak up their magic rays. It's gotta be something special, meaningful. Something that can create an emotional anchor."

Audrey was beginning to follow. "So like, a toy you got from your grandma when you were five years old and you still hang onto it in your back closet."

"Or a dress your master gave you that's so special you never took it off fer a super-duper long time!"

"Or the dirty panties you snuck into your purse to commemorate your first romp in the sack with that fine-ass bitch from accounting!"

Red and golden-almond eyes reared back at the fairy.

"Aw, c'mon! You'd do it too if you weren't all boring-ass virgins. Panty snatchers represent!"

When they continued scowling, Kyu inspected the failed spell circle, poking at the discarded refuse the shadow had been carrying inside itself. Cigarette butts, junk food wrappers and some familiar black beetles with an unearthly, red glow beneath their shells.

"Scorubs," Kyu mused. "An anchor that attracted a shit-ton of scorubs. Sucking up decades of downer magical energy until it became magical itself. Magical enough to start spitting out these shadow spirits."

An anchor. So she'd been right to suspect Zoey's choker. "And if I find this 'anchor' thing, all I've gotta do is smash it and -?"

"Poof!" Kyu flicked her fingers and set off a tiny magic firecracker. "Nothing but stardust. It'd be like smashing and ant hill 'n watching those suckers go running around without a home."

"So? Let's hurry up and find this anchor already!"

Here, Kyu raised her palms in protest. "Whoa, much as I dig bitches who take charge, I'm gonna have to shut ya down, Red. I bent a lot of rules to help Cheerleader and your nerd-girl buddy with their relationships: Stealing client files, feeding magic pills to a human; not to mention helping an alien sneak back on planet. Nothing nobody can prove, but my boss is starting to watch me like a harpy on the hunt. If I keep hanging around here, that's gonna bring a lot of bad attention to Cheerleader and those afterglow wings."

"But you can fix her, right?"

Kyu looked her sternly. "Red, humans that gobble down magic are anomalies. My boss doesn't fix anomalies, she _ends_ them. Y'dig?"

Audrey clenched her fists, now appreciating why Momo had instinctively hissed and spat at this troublesome fairy girl. "You're the one who gave Tiff those fairy pills. You started all this shit and now you're bailing?"

At the very least, Kyu had the decency to flinch and look ashamed. "Look, I can do some digging on my end but it's gotta be quiet. I'm counting on you to fix this shadow shit. Figure out who's after Cheerleader, find the anchor and get rid of it!"

"Damn it, why's it my job to fix everybody's mess?"

Kyu laughed as she approached the roof's edge and spread her wings for take-off. "Um, because you're a Light Bringer? Comes with the virgin priestess territory, Red. Oh, one last thing: I put a shit-ton of overtime into getting Bluebell and Champ back together, so would you get your shit together and please, please, please stop trying to sink their ship? Either that, or start negotiating a three-way, m'kay?"

Bluebell? Champ? Did she mean Nikki and - ? Audrey retched. "You fairies seriously have nothing but sex on the brain."

Kyu bared a shameless and toothy grin. "What can I say? I'm always hungry."

* * *

Back at home under the light of a dark moon, Audrey ripped page after page from her physics notebook as she tried to puzzle out the motives of the shadow creatures' master.

 _At the club, they attack me. At the university, they attack me. They go after Tiffany, they go after Zoey. Who's pissed at all three of us?_

More importantly, what was she going to do when she found the possessor of this magical anchor? She'd started doodling on one page, a crude drawing of Momo firing off a magical hearts. "Hey cat, Misato could do more than just see these magic buggers, couldn't she?"

"Oh Misato was wonderful, Master! She could do all kinds of special magic. Her eyes could see everybody, she could make all sorts of spell tags 'n potions, an' she could hide who she was just like you did for the camera."

 _Not the power I'm looking for_. "That fairy girl. She called me a Light Bringer."

"Mmh! She musta been talking about your super-duper attack!" The kitten danced on her feet again, imitating her former master's voice. " _For the sake of my friends, I will cleanse your evil ways! Starlight Princess Pure Shine Go! BWOOSH!_ That's the spell Misato said t'use the pure-pure beam!"

"Wait, she had a laser beam?" Audrey scooted closer.

"A super love beam," Momo corrected. "A light so super-bright, anything that was bad or dark would go 'poofy' an' disappear!"

Momo delivered it all so innocently and honestly, Audrey almost believed the tale. She indulged a brief vision of vaporizing all the frat assholes and stuck-up snowflakes who got in her way. _Now that's power!_ "She must've been something," Audrey remarked.

"Oh Master, Misato was wonderful! Almost as pretty as you. She was nice an' helpful an' when she transformed, she looked so –"

 _Wait what? Transfor-?_ But before Audrey could press the point, the ring tone on her cell interrupted. _Nikki again?_ "Yeah, whaddya want?"

"Greetings, Audrey-da. Are you presently occupied?"

Audrey's heart skipped a beat. "Celeste? N-no, I'm free. I mean, I'm not doing shit! What's up, space girl?"

The Norai took her time assembling a response. "I find myself in need of companionship. Would you care to join me for the evening?"

Companionship. There were so many ways you could run with that word and Audrey's brain grabbed every possible thread and went zooming. It was a small miracle she kept her voice steady. "Umm, yeah whatever. I'm at home, though."

"I am aware. I can see your profile in the window."

Audrey froze, suddenly aware that she'd been scratching her ass this entire time.

"You're at the front gates," she deadpanned.

"Affirmative. May I enter?"

Audrey glanced out the window, saw the blue figure waving from afar. She groaned. This was so not a good time. The fairy world had dumped its problems in her lap; Nikki was either panicking or deluding herself, Tiffany was in a coma, Zoey had been beaten to a pulp and all her leads had evapor–

 _No,_ she suddenly decided. Fuck it, this was the perfect time. She hadn't felt this low in a long while. Maybe a good old-fashioned mistake would be just the thing to keep her going.

"Gimmie a sec, I'll come get you."


	9. One Girl in All the World

An evening with Celeste Luvendass – intergalactic bounty hunter and badass extraordinaire who redefined sexy to the max. _And she came to see me!_ Audrey's heartbeat hammered against her ribs as she fantasized about Celeste's request for "companionship". _All I've gotta do is strut my stuff and this little visit could end up an all-nighter…_

First order of business was ditching the kid.

"Fetch," she barked to Momo before dumping an entire drawer of nylons off her bedroom balcony. The cat-girl's eyes zoomed wide at the offering of free, shredable stretchy-thingies and she took a running leap into the backyard rose gardens like she was snapping at catnip. Audrey nodded and locked the sliding door after her.

 _You can chew up my entire pantyhose collection for all I care. You're not twat-blocking me tonight, cat!_

In a record ten minutes Audrey was sprinting down the estate's lavish halls like her life depended on it. She'd touched up her make-up, thrown on a special outfit and fixed a pretty bow in her hair. With one look she'd have Celeste purring like a starving cat and aching for the chance to tear the ribbons and wrappings off her sexy package.

In the grand front hallway, Audrey paused to steady her breath. Her breasts were flush from the jackhammer throb of her heart but she needed to play it cool, detached. There was too much at stake to let a dumb virgin's over-eagerness blow everything. _Grab the handle … pull the door and –_

"Hey, what up, space girl?"

A hornless, Caucasian-skinned Celeste pushed her way inside, tired and stressed. "Audrey-da. Thank you for seeing me. My day has been most trying - _Pa na isho…"_

Golden eyes surveyed Audrey's attire while a growl escaped Celeste's blue throat. _Jackpot!_

"That is a ... unique evening dress."

 _Evening dress!_ _Well, she lives with Nikki. Not like she's got a clue about Earth fashion._ Maybe at one of Lusties' lingerie nights the white, satin number could pass as a mini-dress, but officially the flimsy piece of fabric covering her body was a nightie - sleepwear for nights you didn't plan on sleeping much. Covering the very tips of her thighs and dangling off her shoulder by the barest of spaghetti straps, it was probably the plainest piece in her wardrobe of ribbons and frills, but damn did the little number let her flaunt her gorgeous legs!

It had an added bonus – white and trimmed with black lace, it was a lucky match with the panties she wore underneath. Audrey stretched her arms above her head, lifting the hem of her dress and offering a lacy flash. "Like what you see?" she purred.

"It is well matched. To your hair ornament," Celeste added, nodding towards the white bow pinned over her ear.

"Well feel free to ogle this little dress all you want tonight. You're not looking half-bad yourself." Audrey sized up the Norai's attire – a simple but professional button-up blouse pressed against her breasts and a pair of khaki slacks hugged her ass so perfectly. _God, you look incredible!_ Maybe Celeste had more fashion-savvy than she gave her credit.

"So, welcome to Casa Belrose. Make yourself at home." Audrey gave a little catwalk twirl, letting her skirt spin off her hips. The quiet growl from Celeste's throat was so worth the effort.

" _Kosoko kangai._ Thank you for meeting with me. It has been a vexing day."

As soon as the door shut, Celeste's white skin fizzled like a crappy TV signal, exposing her blue flesh, cloven feet and mangled horns. Metal circlets strapped to her forehead, her waist and along her limbs formed the skeletal framework of Celeste's holographic, human guise. With a satisfying growl, Celeste tore the silver band from her forehead. _"Ishi tsura!"_

Audrey licked her lips as she imagined the space woman tearing off her 'evening dress' with that same delight. "Those things a bitch to wear?"

" _Ishi dan_. They are. These holo-cloak projectors heat so easily. Even under your moon, I feel as though I am being cooked!"

Celeste unclipped and dumped the collection of metal bands on the foyer table the way an ordinary guest would set down her keys and wallet. "Thank you, Audrey-da, for meeting on such short notice. I needed to-"

The greeting fell short. Audrey followed Celeste's frozen stare to the wobbly Asian woman gaping in shellshock from across the hallway. Kasumi's empty liquor bottle slipped to the floor with a hollow _clunk._ Her mouth stammered furiously.

"Blue skin… she's got blue-"

 _Mother fucker, not my fucking mother!_

"What're you yammering about now? You think she's got blue skin?" Audrey scoffed as she set the gaslight to max. "For god's sake, she's whiter than you, and you haven't been out for weeks! Blue skin! Go back to your room and get sauced, you dumb bitch!"

The tongue-lashing worked, or maybe the older woman just needed to get away from the incomprehensible stimuli. Kasumi rescued her fallen bottle and skittered away like a frightened deer, trailed by an entourage of black scorub beetles. Audrey grimaced, watching the depression-hungry parasites race after their miserable host.

 _Probably pile on top of her when she sleeps. Good riddance!_ Celeste still carried a worried look, though.

"Relax, you're cool. She's a mental case. No one's gonna believe a damn word she says."

"Is she your matriarch? You two look nothing alike."

"God damn blessing too. Bitch is bipolar or something, I dunno. Can't keep her moods in check unless she's drugged out of her gourd or sauced up on wine. I'm _nothing_ like her."

For some reason, a wave of sympathy washed through Celeste's eyes. "Your people consider her defective…."

 _Don't get all sobby for her_! Time for a topic change - less Kasumi, more Audrey and her sexy, purralicous nightie. "So, crappy day?" She scooted into Celeste's face, standing on tiptoe and brushing against the older woman's breasts.

Celeste inhaled through her teeth and stepped back. "It has been deeply frustrating. I was running maintenance tests on my vessel and when I returned home, Nicole became … argumentative."

"No shit, you guys were fighting?" Trouble in paradise! This was working out better than expected. "What happened? Nikki kick you out?"

"I was not 'kicked out'; I _chose_ to disengage so as to avoid further pointless hostilities."

Audrey laughed. "Oh you were so kicked out. Welcome to the dog house, Mizz Luvendass."

"Dog house? Is that why Nicole refers to you as a bitch?"

 _Nikki calls me that?_ Oh that ballsy asshole! "Ha! I'm the baddest bitch you'll ever see. C'mon!" Audrey wrapped herself around the Norai's arm and led her into the mansion. "I'll pour you a drink and you can vent all you want about Nik. Water, right?"

"I would prefer something softer."

Audrey halted mid-step. "Soft drinks? Whoa, Nik told me you're not supposed to drink caffeine; it messes you up bad."

"I am in a mood to be 'messed up'. Please, I desire a coke of the cola."

"Hmph, you're the boss, space girl."

Time and a few rounds would reveal exactly what else Miss Luvendass desired.

* * *

Chaperoned by a six-pack of coke and a bottle of daiquiri mix, Audrey guided Celeste to the privacy of her bedroom. While the Norai gazed in wonder at her wall of aquarium tanks and the billowing tail fins of her tropical fish, Audrey dimmed the lights, queued up some soft music and kicked over a pair of beanbag chairs so they could "chill". The turquoise glow of her fish tanks bathed Celeste's blue skin in a gentle moonlight that made the space woman look even more captivating.

"Incredible … I never imagined one planet could have such diversity of aquatic species."

 _And I never imagined I'd have such a perfect chance to get laid!_ The spring night outside was humid and sticky. Her house was cool and air conditioned. Celeste wanted relief from the hot planet and relief from a bitchy lover. _Oh, I have_ so _got what you need, space girl._

But she had to move slowly. Build up the atmosphere and all that shit. So she let Celeste crack open her drink while they made flirty small talk. "Hey, if you're feeling all sweaty 'n gross, I've got a pool in the backyard."

"Most appreciated. Unfortunately, I have not brought my bathing garments."

"So? We could always go skinny dipping."

" _Skee-nee -?_ How is this activity related to swimming?"

"It is swimming, stupid! Except you do it _naked_."

"I see." Celeste took a breather to chug back her coke, and Audrey beamed when she caught the flicker of golden eyes darting over her bare legs. "Well, we are both female…"

 _Now we're talking!_ "So? Wanna do it?"

"Perhaps another time," Celeste countered. "I am rather dehydrated."

"Hmph, whatever." Audrey stood to mix her own drink while Celeste worked through her second. _We'll chill, talk shit._ She could play the long con – yawning, stretching her legs and trading smouldering glances until the heat simmered over to a perfect boil.

Once the Norai had drunk her fill of Earth's sugary ambrosias, Celeste would toss her can aside and take the relief she needed by force: shoving Audrey off her cushion and pinning her to the floor. There'd be a momentary pain but all would be drowned and forgotten when Celeste pressed her hot thighs overtop her lap and started grabbing at her nightie.

The burning lips sucking on her skin, making her gasp. The experienced hands groping her breasts, forcing out her groans. She was gonna cum off foreplay alone, and when Celeste had eaten her fill of Audrey's horny morning, she'd shove her legs apart and go down to deliver the ultimate pleasure.

At least that was how it played out in Audrey's daiquiri-sponged mind.

But the damn alien just wouldn't stop talking!

"Nicole believed I was retrieving medicines from my ship…" Celeste paced up and down the room as she drained her latest soft drink. All the caffeine had made her jittery and hyper-focused. The Norai couldn't stand still. "I explained to her again – the fundamental physiological differences between our races; that even local system transporters know not to exchange species-specific medications – but she only grew more agitated, claiming that I was deceiving her, that I was endangering your friend."

Celeste licked at the last sugary droplets caught in the aluminum rim, then tossed the can. "I forget sometimes how young she is, how freshly she still experiences every new joy and hurt. She feels things so closely, so deeply."

"Uh huh..." Audrey nodded, ignored alongside the empties on the floor. _Um, hello? Posing for you in my underwear over here!_ How long was she gonna wax poetic about moody little Ann-Marie? "Well what'd you expect? Nikki's just a kid, after all. Not like us. What's she know?"

"What do _I_ know?" Celeste retorted bitterly. "I am more elder, more experienced, and yet …"

A sad gurgle. "I left her, Audrey. We were arguing and I had reached my capacity. I stood, I turned my back on her and I quit the apartment. I fled. Audrey-da, what if I've angered her beyond repair? What if she cannot be reasoned with?"

Was this what all the belly-aching was about? A girlfriend's grudge? _This shit is what's keeping you from focusing on me?_

"Hey, if Nikki's pissed enough to kick you out, she's too dumb to know what a badass girlfriend she's giving up! You don't have to be stuck, y'know. Nothing saying _you_ can't move on. Find something better?"

"Move on..." A wistful film clouded Celeste's eyes. "There lies my fault: I've grown accustomed to departures. All my life I have 'moved on'."

"And that's awesome, right?" In Audrey's mind, Celeste dazzled like a galactic rock star on a lifelong music tour. "You get to visit all these cool, new planets; you get paid to beat the crap out of assholes! What's not to like?"

"Audrey, I _abandoned_ my planet." The Norai's cloven hoof tapped a nervous tempo as she steadied her breathing. "When my people refused to accept my sexuality, I escaped to make a new life among the stars. Since then, I have fled from one makeshift refuge to another. The Galactic military academy expelled me, Ki-Bosan's mercenary group dismissed me. Even once I established myself as the _Koru-Shikai_ , I kept myself fluid. Whenever I made too many enemies on a certain planet, whenever I ran afoul of local law enforcement or militias, I would simply retreat to my ship and leave the system. I have always retreated from my problems and begun anew. Why not? I had nothing!"

The Norai tottered to the balcony window, golden eyes drifting over the starry lights of downtown Glenberry. Her fingers pressed against the cold glass, grasping for the distant glimmer that marked the apartment of a blue-haired gamer girl.

"There are thousands of habitable systems in our galaxy and I have not called one home since my exile from Tendricide. Until I came to this blue world, I was content to wander. Until I gazed into her eyes, I had no reason to stand my ground and fight. Audrey, because of her, my life has been fulfilled. My _chiletto_ , my Nicole..."

 _Ugh, Nikki, Nikki, Nikki!_ They really were speaking two separate languages! It was time to break the safety glass and haul out the emergency equipment. _Miss Yumi's final seduction tip._

First, she had to do something about all this god-damn hoof-tapping! Audrey took Celeste by the wrist and made her sit on the bed. "You need to chill, okay? Deep breath. Loosen up."

Celeste gasped like a fish out of water but she nodded and wiped away the remnants of tears. _Now's my chance!_ Audrey sat next to the Norai, matching her bare legs against the alien's cream-coloured slacks.

"I get it - Nikki's awesome, okay? But it's a huge galaxy, right? Maybe there's someone better for you just around the corner. Maybe they're so close you can't even realize it."

Celeste looked at her with liquid eyes that sent a tremor through her palms. _Dammit, hands! Not now!_ Audrey forced herself onward. "Maybe you just need to move on one more time."

Taking a deep breath of her own, Audrey placed her palm overtop Celeste's thigh.

Warm. That leg was so unbelievably warm, it was like skimming her palm over bath water. _I'm doing it. Shit, I'm really doing it!_ Audrey had to dive deeper. She started stroking her hand up and down, letting her skin whisper a sensual proposal: _You wanna feel good again? I can make you feel good again._ With every stroke, Audrey could feel her confidence building. Celeste would start purring, smouldering and then she'd -

"What are you doing?"

Celeste's question burst her fantasy bubble. Audrey looked stupidly at her hand. What was she doing?

"Making you … feel good?"

Their eyes met, hopeful rubies reflected in pools of rusted gold. With a withering sigh, Celeste dropped her head into her hands. "Audrey -"

"No!" Audrey sped up her rubbing. _Don't talk. Don't tell me to stop. Don't kill this for me, dammit!_ "It feels good, right?"

"Audrey, there has been a miscommunication."

 _"_ What's not to get? You know what I want, right? You want it too!"

"Audrey, I came tonight -"

"-because you needed to see me!" She wouldn't let Celeste say otherwise. "You need me! On the phone the other day you said I'm important to you!"

"And you are! Audrey, I -"

The Norai broke off and gathered her thoughts.

"Audrey, were you ever honest with anyone about your ... status? That you were a _vibara?_ "

"Stop that shit already! I told you, I'm not a virgin! What do you care? You fucked Nikki and it's not like anyone ever touched her pasty ass before!"

The glare Celeste gave her was harsh enough to wither flowers.

"Tiffany. Tiffany knew."

"Did you feel any relief in sharing that truth?"

"I dunno, maybe." It had been awkward as fuck facing up to Tiffany - burning under the cheerleader's disapproving frown every time she spewed shit to Nikki about her parade of fuck buddies. But alone, just the two of them, it had been calming. Like she didn't have to work so damn hard to keep Tiff impressed. Like she could loosen up. "I guess."

Celeste nodded. "Audrey, every day I spend on this planet, I spend it in hiding. I wear that insufferable hologram, I concoct stories and lies about how I am an immigrant from a far off land of _Ca-nah-da_."

"I thought you were going as an Aussie."

"Precisely! I have told so many conflicting stories to Nicole's acquaintances that they have begun to tangle! My _chiletto_ insists we keep absolute secrecy. Not even your friend Tiffany knows my identity. Audrey, you are the only human on this planet who sees me and knows who I truly am. All the others, I am forced to speak in half-truths and riddles. With you, I can be honest."

 _Honest, huh?_ Audrey's fingers eased back towards Celeste's inner thigh. "So, you're saying I'm special to you. Right?"

The Norai gave a musical chuckle as she removed the wandering hand and held it dearly in her own. "Audrey, Nicole is my mate but I count you among the very few I have been privileged to call my friend."

Audrey swallowed those bitter words and felt their sickening weight tighten over her chest. "So … we're friends?"

"Yes. Gladly so!"

The bottle of daiquiri mix shattered against the far wall.

" _Are you fucking serious?_ Friends? I don't want another god-damn friend, I wanna get laid! _Friends?_ Fuck! You're fucking friends with benefits with Nikki and I'm ten times as hot as that bitch will ever be!"

"Audrey, she is my mate."

"So? Not like you can't go back to her! Just … mate with me too, god-dammit! I turn you on, right?" Desperate, she pulled down the straps of her slip and pressed her cleavage together in offering. "C'mon, I make you purr, right?"

Even as Celeste turned her eyes away, Audrey could hear the telltale growl bubbling up from her throat. "You fucking want me, I know it."

She forced herself onto Celeste's lap, she rubbed her nose across the Norai's cheek and panted sexy little promises into her ear. _"C'mon, don't you wanna feel how fucking wet I am? Mm?"_

"Audrey –"

" _Fuck yes, say my name!"_ Her nails tore at Celeste's shoulders, her hips bucked stiffly in a panicky attempt at a lap dance. "So what if I've never done it with a guy? I finger-fuck myself all the time, I can figure it out. _Show me how to do it right._ "

Celeste bit down her lips but the growl kept fighting from deep inside her throat. _Almost there._ Shuddering deeply, Audrey gathered up her nightie and pulled her last piece of clothing over her head.

Black hair spilled free across her pale, naked shoulders.

 _"Touch me."_ Audrey grabbed her breasts, felt them up until her nipples were hard and aching. "I've touched myself so many times thinking about you. I want you -" She hugged her naked body against Celeste and put everything on the line, moaning one final, tantalizing plea.

" _\- and you can do whatever you want with me."_

Celeste took her by the shoulders and pushed her away.

"Audrey, you are most attractive for a human but I have made my commitment."

Her wrist was gently seized, her hand guided along Celeste's scarred cheek. She flinched when the Norai forced her to touch her cold, prosthetic ear and her charred horn stump. Audrey wrenched her hand free.

"So that's it, then? I'm just some emotional cum dumpster to you, aren't I? Things get shitty with Nikki, you waltz over, blow your load of feels all over me like I'm some snotty hankie and then you leave?"

"Audrey-da –"

"SHUT UP!" She clawed the ribbon from her hair and stamped it to the ground. " _You came to talk!_ What a walking pile of shit you are! I got all dressed up, I got all stressed out, I – I got naked for you, god dammit! Fuck you, you cunt-licking goat! I – I …

She fell to her knees. She didn't even have the strength to hold herself up anymore.

"I was gonna go gay for you!"

"Audrey…" Her eyes were blind with tears but she was aware of Celeste's body heat. Callused hands resting on her shoulders in a poor attempt at comfort.

Audrey hit her. She bundled up her fists and hammered away at Celeste's chest over and over. The Norai didn't as much as flinch before her shitty-ass punches.

"God dammit, I want you! You don't take shit from anyone, you can shoot and stab and kick the crap out of any jackass who gives you lip and you still look perfect! I get into one fuckin' scrape with a shitty frat bastard and I can't stop shaking! I lose my best friend and I turn into a fucking wreck!"

She dug her nails into Celeste's skin - not just to hold her in place, but to try and seize the power permeating this indestructible woman's body.

"Make it go away," she begged. "Make me feel right again."

Her sobbing hiccups echoed through the dark room. Slowly but inevitably, Celeste pulled herself away and forced their eyes to meet.

"I am sorry. I should never have allowed events to come this far, Audrey. I was … flattered by your attention, your advances, but I cannot reciprocate. I have chosen my mate. I can offer you my friendship, and if you truly desire my strength, I can teach you all I have learned of combat and defense. Will you allow me this penance?"

Deep down, she understood that Celeste was offering her a way out of this screw up. A _Get out jail free_ card _,_ a _Nikki doesn't need to know_ pass. A quick and easy reset switch that would let her stay close to the woman she admired. Deep down in her chest there was a sad and tiny, "okay" fighting to rise to her lips and raise the white flag.

But dammit, she'd been _hurt!_

"Fuck you. Fuck you, you blue, cunt-guzzling dyke. I can't believe I ever wanted to touch you and that shitty wreck of a face. I hope that horn never grows back and rots on your head. And that scar! Nik really goes down on you when you look like that? Fuck, that's gross."

Celeste gave a curt sigh. She didn't seem surprised by the response but that didn't blunt any of the disappointment either. "Thank you. For reminding me why I left so many systems behind. For reminding me why I hold Nicole so dear." She stood.

"Where the fuck are you going?"

"To my home. My behavior has been asinine and must apologize to my _chiletto_."

"Fine then, run! Run away like the little bitch you are! I don't need you! I'm gonna get dressed, go clubbing and I'll score a foursome with two dykes and a dick! Fuck you, you carpet-shredding goat!"

"Good night, Audrey." Celeste clicked the door shut behind her.

It was over.

And this time there was no stopping the tremble working through her hands. _It's happening again!_ She was back at that damn fraternity house, cold and shaking and exposed, but tonight there was no fairy magic to rescue her. Audrey looked down on her small, crappy breasts and her stained, white panties. The sight made her sick to her stomach.

She scrabbled for her phone, texting for an opiate more powerful than any alcohol.

 _=Tiffany?=_

 _=Where the fuck are you, Tiff?=_

 _=Answer me, dammit! I need to do truth time!=_

 _=Tiffany?=_

 _=Tiffany?=_

Oh, right. Hospital. Unconscious and on a supernatural chopping block because she'd been too damn good and pure to know when to give up on a shitty-ass friend. A friend she had the lady-balls to admit that she -

"Fuck my life! Why me?"

Audrey chucked her phone to the floor, and in the screen's light she saw the scorubs skittering across her carpet, pouring in underneath her door. Coming for her.


	10. A Light in the Darkness

When the cat finally dignified the room with her presence, she was the only pleasant thing to be found inside. The balcony doors were locked but Momo's feline shadow squeezed beneath the frame like it had been left wide open. With a whiff of sulfur, the kid bounded back into the third dimension, smacking her lips and looking pleased as punch over her successful nylon evisceration.

Then her almond eyes fell upon the wreck of her master.

"Wh-what happened?" The cat-girl glanced around the room – shattered glass, kicked beanbag chairs and a hive of scorubs rummaging around the carpeted floor, inspecting their new lodgings. A head of tangled black and blue hair lifted from a deep stupor.

"Oh… You're back... Yay?"

Audrey had pulled a long black T-shirt over her naked body but that was all the effort she'd made to look presentable. She was slumped beneath her aquarium tanks in a sad attempt to soak up the faint warmth of the underwater lights. An ashtray crammed full of butts was plopped within one hand's reach; the other caressed the glassy neck of her good friend, Dr. McGillicuddy.

"Master, the bad bugs are everywhere!"

"Yeah… they're not so bad… after a while." Kinda nice to know that so many would surround you even after you looked and felt like utter shit. The cat insisted on being a killjoy, though – hissing and shooing the Sky Garden beetles to the door and chomping on the stragglers.

"Master, Momo thought you were having a play-date with your friend! Where'd she go?"

"Oh … Celeste?" Audrey sucked on her cigarette until the ash end burned with hellfire. "Who cares," she finally exhaled. The energy for even a token 'fuck you' escaped her.

"Did something happen, Master? When Misses Celeste called, you were super happy!"

"Me and happy are having a trial separation, cat. Just … go away."

 _"Mrrow…"_ Momo seemed to grow sad just looking at her. The cat-girl padded close and rubbed her cheek across Audrey's knee, a pathetic attempt at spreading cheer. Audrey turned away until Momo sighed and retreated. _It's useless, cat._ Nothing was going to get her out of this funk, not even -

"Hey! Cat, those are my CDs! Don't fucking touch them!"

Momo darted back from the thick leather binder Audrey had tossed on the carpet. Shiny, reflective discs stocked the plastic sleeves inside. "See-dees?" Momo chirped.

"It's all the old music I haven't ripped onto my hard drive." Since Celeste's departure, her stereo had been looping the original cast recording of _I Dreamed a Dream_. All her classics were in that case! _Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Les Mis._ "Scratch those and you're dead."

"Ohh, CDs! Don't worry, Momo knows just t'look! Momo used to get inta super big trouble with Misato whenever she played with her music. Momo would get her paws stuck in the ribbons and they'd all come apart!"

 _Ribbons?_ What did ribbons have to do with - "Wait, you mean tapes? As in cassette tapes? You used to unravel Misato's cassette tapes?"

"Mmh!"

Audrey sat up and looked the cat dead on.

"Momo, how old are you?"

The cat-girl's tail froze in mid-swish.

"Momo's a kitty!"

"I fucking know that. I'm talking age. As in _years_."

"Mrrow? Momo doesn't get it…"

Audrey smacked her own head in frustration. "They stopped making cassettes in the -"

" _Momo doesn't like these questions, Master!_ "

The kid's hands clamped tight over her skull, burying her ears as her chest hyperventilated.

Audrey scooted back. _Holy crap, what was that?_ Half freaked that she'd be slashed by jittery kitten claws, Audrey kept to her wall and gave the kid space to calm down.

"It hurts," Momo admitted once her breathing had settled. "It makes Momo's heart go _owwie_ when she thinks about the alone time after Misato."

"Alone?" Audrey pressed. "Look, not to beat a dead horse or anything but ... after Misato … y'know, _went away,_ didn't you find anyone else?"

"Sometimes Momo found places to stay, but the people she lived with always thought she was just a regular, dumb cat. They'd feed her cat mush and make her use the sandy box for number two in front of everybody! Some of them even _walked_ Momo. On a leash, Master! And if Momo didn't do what they said, they'd pull on her neck!"

Audrey touched her own neck in a sympathy pain.

"Misato let Momo sleep in her bed. She taught Momo how'ta read story books an' how'ta sing. She _saw_ Momo, talked t'Momo. She said Momo was her special little girl an' -"

The kid started sniffling there, so Audrey tilted her head up at her fish to offer some privacy. _Shit… I thought this Misato kicked it last year or something._ Aging clearly worked differently for fairy world creatures. _She's been on her own for …_ well, just doing a rough count made Audrey's head wince.

"Aren't you pissed, cat? I mean, don't you wanna go slash and burn all the shits who treated you so bad?"

"Sometimes Momo gets angry or sad," the cat-girl sniffled, "but Misato told Momo she hasta be brave and always do her best! She'd find a new master someday!"

 _Well damn…_ And here she was, Audrey Belrose, wallowing in her own shit because the blue bitch had friend-zoned not her twenty minutes ago.

Audrey noticed a final scorub skittering beside her smoking hand. She stabbed her cigarette into its back, mashing down on the wriggling parasite until it lay still and dead. Sharp, red eyes fell on the sniffling kitten.

"Hey, cat? Get on the bed."

"Mrrow?"

"Get," Audrey ordered, marching for her vanity. "Keep up the sob fest and those bugs'll be back for an encore. You're getting your hair combed!"

* * *

Soon Momo was _'nyaa'_ -ing pleasantly and melting into her lap while Audrey did her best to unknot the kid's chocolatey hair. For her troubles, a happily-swishing tail continually bopped at her nose.

"Not making this easy, cat," she sighed. "Hey, after this you wanna watch some TV?"

Velvety ears sprang to attention. "Can Momo choose?"

 _Hoo boy…_

* * *

Her laptop screen was touch-enabled so even Momo could bat at the monitor and scroll through Netflix's blocky library pictures. "Here, Master! These movies will help you learn about your powers! They're teachin' videos about friendship 'n magic!"

Audrey squinted at the title. " _My Little …?_ Oh god, this is one of Nikki's furry shows, isn't it?" She was ready to shut the case and stop everything but the damn cat looked at her so pathetically! "Ugh, fine. But only one episode."

"Yay!"

The cat neglected to mention that it opened with a two-parter.

* * *

Audrey imagined she'd roll a joint and get high while she pretended to watch Momo's cartoon for babies.

She never imagined she'd start crouching close to the screen, rapt with attention.

"Wait, she drop-kicked her sister to the moon? Holy shit, what a bitch!"

"But the moon princess was being mean, Master!"

"Yeah, about that. What's this bullshit about raising the sun and moon every day?" She may have scraped by with a 'D' in high school science but even she knew the _planets_ moved around the _sun,_ not the other way around. "How can she friggin' lift the sun any- _Holy shit!_ Cat, this princess chick is totally scamming these dumb ponies!"

"Do you wanna keep watching, Master?"

No, but the promise of cutesy-poo animals gathering torches and pitchforks against the monarchy was tempting…

"One more, and that's it."

* * *

Five episodes went by.

"So, this eagle chick –"

"Gryphon, Master."

"Whatever. Is she gay for the blue horse?"

"Nyaa? Master, they're just friends."

"Cat, she tossed a frickin' helicopter out of the sky. Nobody gets that clingy over a _friend_. Bitch is thirsty as fuck for Dash. Wants to _taste the Rainbow_ , amiright?"

"Maaaa-ster, that's yuckie! Besides, the yellow pony is Dashie's special friend."

"The animal hugger? Wait, I thought she was getting eaten out by the fashion horse."

"No, Rarity is with the farmer!"

"BULLSHIT!"

* * *

She never expected to become enraged.

"They _Wrecked. Her. Caravan!"_

"But Master, she was boasting!"

"Cat, she was getting her swag on! Those lame-ass country shits just couldn't handle how awesome she was! Such bullcrap! Okay, there's gotta be another episode where she comes back and kicks all their asses."

"Do you wanna look ahead, Master?"

"Hell yes!"

* * *

She never imagined she'd become inspired.

"All right, cat! I'm gonna do it! And this 'pure pure beam' shit's gonna make their friendship cannon look like total weak sauce!"

"You can do it, Master! Momo believes in you!"

For good luck, Audrey chugged down the last of her schnapps and tossed the bottle. The bedroom had been converted into a target range. Atop a pile of university textbooks and trapped underneath a clear Tupperware dish, a lone scorub circled its prison walls, oblivious to the total awesomeness that was about to knock it out of this world!

Audrey breathed deeply, she bounced on her feet and shook the nervous tension from her arms. "Okay … okay…"

A final glance – to make sure _fucking no one_ was watching. Then she twirled on the spot and flashed the bug a peace sign.

" _Starlight Princess Pure Shine Go!"_

Nothing.

Audrey spun again. " _Starlight Princess Pure Shine Go! … GO! For the sake of my friends..._ C'mon, god damn it _... I will …_ mrgh _… cleanse your evil!"_

"Concentrate, Master!"

"I'M _TRYING!"_ God damn it, the cat had made Misato's light beam power sound so easy! Find your inner calm, focus on the target and think about everything fluffy and warm: rainbows, gumdrops, tiny baby ducks and all that crap. Happy thought were the fuel that ignited Misato's ultimate spell. Warmth and goodness were the ammunition for this virgin priestess purification ritual.

 _You should be dead._ The scorub should have frozen on the spot, eyes popping wide and squealing a little insect squeal of despair as it witnessed the oncoming surge of white light. "Niiii," it would scream as a hurricane of dazzling energy disintegrated its body like black sand caught in a breeze.

But the little bugger just kept scuttling around, mocking her with its continued existence.

 _Mother fucker, how'm I supposed to get rid of those shadows if this fucker won't even roll over and die?_

"Happy thoughts," Momo whispered in reminder.

Happy thoughts. Easy enough for the furball to say. She didn't have a best friend on the line!

"Happy thoughts," Audrey repeated, gritting her teeth in concentration. It just wouldn't work. The harder she squeezed her brain, the more desperately she wrung her gray matter for smiles, the more frustrated she grew. Her memories had nothing to offer but anger. A sizzling annoyance at the world and the idiots around her.

 _God damn Celeste, playing me for a fool. God damn Nikki shoving her perfect girlfriend into my fucking face! God damn Zoey and her whore-ass cam stream, wasting my precious time and throwing me off target!_

Her thoughts weren't simply sizzling anymore, they were throwing sparks and catching fire.

 _God damn love fairy for dumping her shitty problems on me, god damn shadow-master for screwing with my life! God damn everybody for fucking leaving -_

"Um, Master?"

"WHAT?"

The cat-girl cowered. She gestured meekly to the captured scorub.

The black beetle had collapsed on its belly, shrieking. When jets of steam erupted from its armor, Audrey realized the high pitched whistle was the shriek of bug guts being boiled alive. The scorub's black shell swelled up in ugly, red blisters; wet, shuddering pustules that burst over the tupperware, throwing the container to the ground in a clatter. Oily, frothing bug innards gushed over the textbook cover, searing it black.

The whiff of charcoal hit Audrey's nose. She felt her last meal rising up her esophagus. It was only a misery-sucking scorub but Momo gaped as though she'd just witnessed the brutal disembowelling of Santa Claus.

"Master... Maybe we should take a break."

Audrey nodded, then bee-lined to the toilet bowl.

* * *

When she quit the bathroom, Audrey found her room expertly tidied. The kid had already cleaned up the target range, destroyed the evidence. Nice.

"Feeling better, Master?"

"Yeah, peaches 'n cream, cat. Peaches 'n cream."

For good measure, Audrey sprayed half a can of air freshener over the room. Because her shit stank. Nothing to do with the stench of burnt exoskeleton, no sir!

They did not speak of the half-melted insect. They did not speak of the aborted attempt at practicing magic. They'd watched pony vids and that was it.

Audrey threw herself under her bed covers, smothering herself in a protective cocoon. A bounce of the springs announced Momo's presence atop the bed sheets. The cat-girl padded round in circles, and when she finally curled up next to her, Audrey decided she was too tired to knock the kid to the ground.

"Night, cat."

"Nighty-night, Master."

A long, restless attempt at shutting her eyes passed.

"Okay, when Misato tried that purification stuff for the first time, did she -"

"She could do it perfect from the start, Master. Momo's seen other girls like you and Misato. Their powers never did... _that."_

"Wow. Thanks for the pep talk, cat." Grimly, Audrey whispered out the day's report. "So we still don't know where those shadows are coming from."

"No, Master."

"Even if we do find this master and this 'anchor', we still don't have a way to beat back those smoke freaks." What good was grabbing a guy's wallet if his crew was on alert, ready to beat the shit out of you the instant you made your move?

"No."

Audrey smashed a fist into her pillow. "So what good was all this crap we went through? Tiff's still in danger and we didn't get shit done!"

All Momo offered in response was the slow swish of her tail across the bed. _Of course._

And then -

"Hey, Master? What's a kitty's favorite food?"

"What? Tuna."

"And where do kitties like getting scratchies best of all?"

"Their ears, duh." Hadn't she made sure to give the little furball a royal rubdown while they'd watched TV?

"And when you see lotsa kitties together?"

"A clowder! What's with all the questions anyway?"

Her answer came in a surprise kitten glomp from behind. "You just passed your first kitty quiz, Master. You've grown a super-duper bunch!"

The kid seemed to think she'd won the carnival's grand prize, but all Audrey saw was a five-cent plastic bauble. "Wow that was lame, even for you, cat."

"Momo's super-serious! You learned so much about magic and kitties t'day. Momo's proud you're her master!"

"You wouldn't be so proud if you really knew me." An idea flitted to mind. "Hmph, bet you couldn't get through a single dumb question about me!"

"Ask me, ask me!" The kid was insatiable. Now she actually had to think of questions!

"Um… okay, number one. What's my favorite drink?"

"Momo dunno. But you like it when people _give_ you drinks, Master."

"Daiquiris. Schnapps is the shit when you need something quick 'n cheap, I guess. Okay – my favorite colour. What is it? Come on, I'm waiting!"

"Blue, Master! All your dressies are blue and you put it in your hair too. Is that 'cause you wanna be like Nikki and Misses Celeste?"

Beneath the surface, the cat's words slammed her like a gun to the ribs. "Ha! If you can't tell my favorite color is red, you must be fucking blind!"

"Master… you don't wear red."

Audrey frowned. _Right ..._ "I don't have favorite colours, okay? It's just whatever I'm in the mood for." Before her blue phase she'd been purple and platinum blonde, and before that, cherry red with frosted white. "But I hate brown. Anything but boring-bitch brunette."

"Next question! Next question!"

"Okay, what's like … my favorite thing to do, ever?"

"Easy peasy! You like talking with your friend, Tiffany! That's the only time Momo really saw you smile."

Another rude kick to the ribs. "No, I like to go shopping at the mall, especially if it's with someone else's money!"

"You had fun at the big shoppy-place this morning," Momo conceded, "but Momo knows you were super-duper happier when Miss Tiffy was combing your hair."

Audrey grit her teeth and clenched her pillow. "Zero for three, cat! You don't know anything about me! Hmph, I'll give you one more chance but I know you can't figure out the size of my tits."

"Master, who cares how big your boobies are? You look after your fishies, you help your friends and you've been so super-nice to Momo. Isn't that what matters?"

She didn't answer. Audrey shut her eyes and breathed restlessly until she cracked, spinning around and scooping the cat-girl into her arms.

"M-Master?"

"Don't make this weird, okay?" Audrey shuddered into the kid's neck. "Here's the deal - you're my cat. I'll feed you, play with you and scratch behind your ears 'til your leg falls off. If you ever leave me, I'll hate you forever."

Smiling, the kid eased into her backwards hug. "Then Momo will stay with you until she dies. Pinkie promise."

She laughed. "Geez, don't get so heavy, cat." Heavy … Damn, now her eyes were getting heavy. Something about warm kitty hair putting her mind at ease. Just a … little rest…

* * *

In her dream, she stood in darkness – a deep void stretching to the endless horizon. Three of the shadow creatures paced around her, black sharks hunting in an inky grave. Audrey grasped for her purse – the spell tags! – but she was defenseless as the first of the silhouettes broke the circle and rose over her.

"You must hate me so much," it declared. The smoke-skin of its body evaporated and Tiffany stepped out of her shadowy wrappings, face shredded with cuts and bruises. "You put all your faith in me. You counted on me like no one else. Then I went and betrayed your trust. Stings, doesn't it?"

"For fuck's sake, you didn't exactly pick a great time to come out as bi or whatever!"

"You must hate me so much." The second shadow resolved into cam-whoring Zoey and her lemon-yellow leather. She stuttered forward on twitchy, broken legs. "I have hundreds of men worshiping me but they all dismiss you. Such a pity. Were you not so problematic, we could have been such good friends. There's so much we could have complained about together."

"Full stop – no. No way in hell would we be -"

The words died on her lips as the final shadow revealed herself. _Shit, anyone but you._

"Who else but me?" Cherry red hair frosted white around the edges and pinned with bows. An extravagant checkered dress decorated with black ribbons and strawberry lace. A cigarette in her hand and a shit-eating grin on her face. "Hey, bitch! Long time, no see!"

Audrey swallowed stiffly. _Me._

Or rather, the red-obsessed Audrey from a year ago. The Audrey who'd lived happy and ignorant of fairies, aliens and magical beasts and all the awful shit trusted friends would pull on you.

Red Audrey took a hurried drag from her cigarette, flicking the butt into the darkness as she checked her phone. "Kay, I got shit to do, so let's cut to the fucking chase. I _know_ how much you hate me."

Audrey clenched her fist but when her redheaded past stepped into her face, she found herself backpedaling.

"I mean, what's not to hate? Me, I'm happy with my drinks and getting fucked up, but you've got nothing. Nobody! Can't get a guy, can't get a good lay. Fuck, even chicks cringe and leave when they see the shit you're saddled with."

Audrey clenched her teeth. "Go to hell, you-"

"Don't fucking interrupt! You bark like a yappy bitch but you're toothless! You can preen and show off all you want, but all you're flaunting are dead dreams. You'll never have it as good as I do!"

"Shut up!" Audrey felt herself backing into a wall but she stood her ground. "Shut up you stupid-ass, spoiled daddy's girl! You're the one who hasn't got shit to her name!"

Zoey tilted her head, blue dreadlocks spilling to the side. "Why does she keep interrupting?"

"Oh my -" Tiffany cupped her mouth to stifle a cruel giggle. "Girls, she thinks we're talking to _her_."

"Most curious."

Red rolled her eyes and jabbed a finely manicured nail into the air. "Bitch, I'm talking to _her_."

Audrey spun around, discovering that the wall at her back was a vanity table, the foundation of an impossibly tall mirror. Audrey recognized the bronze skinned figure reflected in the glass: dark Latin hair, stormy eyes and golden hoop earrings.

"Delrio..."

Red clapped her on the shoulder. "Huh, so you thought we were talking shit about –? Wow, you've got issues, kid."

Then the mirror shattered.

Audrey raised her hands to protect her skin from the onslaught of jagged shards, leaving her completely vulnerable to the massive black bear paw that seized her around the waist. Delrio burst from the mirror's broken frame, except now she was a titanic black bear - a beastly mother howling to protect her cub. Her free paw came down on the shadow trio, crushing them into black smoke. Audrey screamed as the mother bear brought her towards its maw of white fangs.

"Master, grab my hand!"

Momo! The cat-girl's voice echoed from above, and the bear flinched at the sudden burst of falling light. A tiny kitten bounded from the heavens. It looked impossibly weak but when Audrey latched onto its precious little paw, she was instantly heaved out of the bear's grasp and flying towards the sunlight at incredible speed.

"Hang on, Master! Momo's gotcha!"

They were rocketing towards the light, so bright and blue that Audrey had to flinch and hide her eyes from the pure shimmer.

 _Shimmer?_

"Momo, that's a lake! Momo, we're gonna go right into –"

"Deep breath, Master!"

* * *

Audrey shot up with a gasp, heaving fresh air into her frightened lungs. Her bedroom. Her bed. Her hair, damp against her skin, her night shirt cold and soaked with water.

Squatting on the wet bed sheets with a dripping basin in her hands, Momo scanned the results of her emergency wake up.

"You were yelling in your sleepy-time, Master. Momo didn't know what else t'do."

"A dream," Audrey panted. "I saw – Momo, did Misato ever have dreams?"

"Mrrow? Momo doesn't remember that kinda magic."

She ignored the cat-girl. Fuck, her head hurt but this was more than just a hangover migraine. Had to be! Her powers were growing and her second sight had become a prophetic sight! Tiffany, Zoey, herself – three fates tied together by a shadowy puppet master. "The dream, it was telling me who's behind this shit!"

And that was ALL the dream had meant to say.

"Delrio. You must hate us all so much. Well, I'm coming for you … you …"

Momo tilted her head. "You...?"

Crap, what _was_ her name? Audrey paused her declaration of war so she could swipe at her phone. A quick Google search brought up the mall salon. She scrolled through the staff listing.

"Janie … Karen … Ky-? Kyanna? Who the fuck spells 'Kyanna' with a 'y'?"

Whatever. She snapped her phone shut.

Time to do some potion work and brew up the mother of all hangover cures. Then it was time to end this shit.


	11. Paving the Road to Hell

Morning found the sky overcast with storm clouds, the perfect coals to fuel Audrey's black temper. Not that she needed the help. Stomping across her bedroom, cellphone in hand, Audrey had idiots aplenty to stoke her rage.

"Whaddya mean Kyanna's 'out'?"

The stylist manning the salon phone gave an exasperated sigh. "Like I said, Kyanna took a personal day. Something about a trip to the hospital. You with her doctor?"

"No, I'm her goddamn mother, fuck you!"

She killed the call and chucked the phone. It bounced harmlessly on her bed where Momo crouched, calmly licking herself clean. _God dammit, how're you so chill, cat?_ How was her brain not firing off angry sparks or bubbling like a bloody cauldron?

Audrey tried to remember a time when anger hadn't come so naturally to her, when she didn't have to fight off a shrill bark or pry apart clenched teeth on a daily basis.

 _No wonder I can't do Misato's purifying shit._ Happy thoughts were the farthest thing from her mind.

"So, Master?"

Audrey chewed her nail, debating. She'd found Delrio's address through some online digging. The magical anchor that sustained the shadow creatures had to be kept at the hairdresser's home, hidden somewhere safe. _How am I supposed to snatch it now?_ With Kyanna busy at work, she could root around at her leisure. _Now, bitch could show up at any time…_

"Fuck it, we're going."

Three days Tiffany had been in the hospital, three days with a shadowy death squad waiting for the chance to snuff her out. "I can't just slap on fresh spell tags forever. It's gotta end today."

"Then Momo will be of service, nyan~!"

The cat-girl pounced off the bed to retrieve her kitty face stockings and boots. She'd slept all night in her fur-trimmed tank top and red skirt, the gifts from her Master too precious to consider parting with.

Audrey took her own final look in the mirror. Nothing she could do about the blue highlights in her black hair but she had purged all traces of Celeste worship from her wardrobe. Today's sundress was white with a frilled skirt around her knees. She hadn't decided on a colour for her latest re-invention so white seemed a good start - a pure canvas, just and blameless. Cleansing white, the same way she'd wipe out the magic of that shitstain, Delrio.

Yet in the mirror, her hands trembled.

"Momo can't wait to see what Master's costume looks like! When Misato transformed, she had this pretty, white –"

The cat noticed her jittering fingers. "Ready steady, Master?"

"Yeah, I got this, cat." Audrey breathed deeply and gave a cleansing exhale. She couldn't quite shoo the last butterflies from her stomach but it would do. "Besides, I'm riding with the cat that makes everything twenty percent cooler."

"An' Momo's super-duper happy she has her great 'n powerful master!"

 _Fuck, I'm gonna have to buy the kid the blu-ray boxsets, aren't I?_

Audrey gathered up her war supplies: her phone for coordinates, her can of mace for emergencies and she shoved them into her purse alongside a booklet's worth of freshly drawn, shadow-warding spell tags. She topped off the mess with a baggie of her finest weed.

"After this shit's done, you 'n me are gonna smoke this bag dry, cat."

"Ewwie! Master can smoke her smelly sticks all by herself. But … maybe Momo can have a lemonade?"

"Cat, I will squeeze the lemons myself and pretend they're Delrio's head."

Momo raised a kitten paw and Audrey high-fived it to shake on their deal. _God, I feel ready to eat the world for breakfast!_

In the mirror, they couldn't have looked more dissimilar – a crouching kitten and a high-strutting diva, kiddy cuteness personified and fabulousness in the flesh. But together, they would be unbeatable.

Side by side, kitten and master marched out the door.

Time to go to war.

* * *

Kasumi intercepted them on the way down and to Audrey's utter confusion, the bright eyed woman was trailing an entourage of happily bouncing bib-bobbers. A rare, excitable smile lit up her slothful mother's face.

"Your visitor – from last night. I need to see her! I need more references!"

A half-painted canvas of blue and white was shoved into Audrey's face. One look made the diva grimace like she'd bitten into a cockroach.

 _Celeste._

Her mother had been painting the alien's portrait - horns, blue skin and all. A solemn sadness filled the Norai's eyes, like she was gazing towards some unreachable friend just off-canvas. It was good. So good, Audrey felt her chest tighten and her fingers drift to her phone to beg forgiveness.

Then Kasumi seized her hands with a beggar's grip. "I need to see her, just once more! Please, Audrey - I'm drawing again! I'm feeling _right_ again!"

Audrey recoiled like she'd been touched by a plague-bearer. "Stay the fuck away from me, you freak!" She swatted away the diseased woman, causing the canvas to clatter to the floor.

The mood died instantly.

Kasumi's bib-bobbers exploded like dropped pumpkins. Heaps of scorubs burst from the shattered gourds and circled the speechless woman until she stood ankle-deep in the writhing, black beetles.

"Every time," she seethed. "Every time I start to feel better, _you_ happen."

"Oh, you wanna go?" Audrey stamped over to the hall closet, seized a coat hanger and threw the barb at Kasumi's feet in challenge.

"Take it! Twenty-two years too late but why don't you have another go? C'mon! Let's see if you've actually got the balls this time!"

Before her tidal wave of feral anger, Kasumi broke. The older woman flinched and looked away.

"What a fucking surprise. How the fuck did I ever get shit out of a pathetic piece of crap like you?"

"Go to hell," Kasumi hissed back before retreating with her damaged canvas. Audrey followed the hate-filled woman and her train of scorubs.

And she wondered…

"No." Audrey shook her head. _Couldn't be her._ No, she was being stupid. Delrio was the one behind this. Delrio was the one she needed to take down.

"Master," Momo whined, "that was a pretty painting your mommy made."

Audrey said nothing, she simply soldiered on.

* * *

Kyanna's address was in a shitty neighbourhood where limos or her convertible would attract all the wrong attention, so Audrey summoned a random driver from a ride-sharing app to get across town. When a boxy Honda Civic coughed up to the mansion's front gates, Audrey winced and wondered if the app came with a 'refund' page. Even Momo gagged at the old engine's rusted-out stink.

The driver rolled down her window and Audrey recoiled at the familiar Asian face.

"Miss Yumi? The fuck? You're an Uber driver?"

"Belrose? Wait, you're a rich bitch?"

Momo's eyes darted between two stunned faces.

"Oh, whatever," Audrey huffed. At least she wasn't going to be mugged or manhandled by this driver. Ms. Yumi was the good kind of pervert. "Hey, don't you have classes this morning?"

"Ha, good one! The dean's not letting anyone back onto campus until the cops wrap up their investigation."

Audrey went numb. "Cops?"

"Um, yeah. What rock have you been living under? Yesterday, someone broke into the girl's dorms and beat the crap out of a student. Admin's been up twenty four-seven handling calls from reporters and panicky parents. It was all over the news."

 _Crap,_ Audrey winced as she clipped her seatbelt and motioned for Momo to squeeze in by her legs. She'd known Zoey's video had exploded over Nikki's nerdy corners of the Internet but now there were actual, real-life detectives looking into the assault. _What if they find my DNA or something in the dorm room?_

"I... don't watch the news, okay?"

Aiko gave her a long, piercing stare before letting it go. "So, where're we headed?"

Audrey gave the address and Miss Yumi whistled as she started down the street. "Pretty rough neighborhood for a white girl. You sure?"

"Sure as shit. Got another bitch to deal with."

 _Double crap,_ that was not the thing to tell someone who knew about Zoey. "I mean ... Hey, what's with this ride-sharing side gig? I thought you made mad money teaching physics."

"You would think so."

The bitterness in that snort killed the conversation a good while. When the silent driving became unbearable, Audrey coughed.

"Hey, about my family-"

"Relax, you're secret's safe, rich girl. I know what it's like to have people mooching after your cash. My family's crazy rich too."

"Really?"

"Hell yeah. Like, 'wipe your ass with a hundred dollar bill' rich. The Yumis are in the sake business and if there's anything every overworked and underappreciated Japanese salaryman needs, it's booze!"

 _Wow._ "So, if you're loaded, how come -?"

"My _family_ is loaded. _Ojii-san_ wrote me out of the will. I dunno, something about not being a proper little Japanese housewife." Miss Yumi took her turn to cough. "That, and I kinda sucked off my cousin, Natsuki."

"Seriously? Your -"

"Okay, in my defense he was my fourth cousin removed - totally from a branch family - and shit was that boy hung!"

"Damn, that's hard core!"

"Hard core enough for granddad to disown me. Sent me packing with a parting bottle of sake and that was that."

"Wow … Fuck family, am I right?"

"Hell yeah! Hey, speaking of my favorite four-letter word, how's your lez friend? Any progress?"

"Ugh, I am so over that gay shit. Putting that phase behind me."

Audrey realized her mistake too late. "I mean –"

" _You're_ over-?" Aiko's eyebrows arched in confusion. "Wait, this whole time we were talking about you?"

"Arrgh! Yes, okay? I had this stupid gay crush but I'm done, got it? … Wait, you seriously didn't know?" She thought they'd been speaking in code this whole time, politely referring to 'a friend' to save her further embarrassment.

"Huh… Well, welcome to Camp Bisexy, kiddo."

"I'm _not_ gay! And fuck, you're a dumbass! How're you even teaching at a freakin' university?"

Aiko scratched the back of her head. "Well, I do give a mean blowjob."

Audrey snorted and laughed. Leave it to Miss Yumi to know how to defuse her anger! It was a poor substitute for 'truth time' with Tiffany but Audrey felt her muscles relax and her scowl break. _Damn, it's good to know there's someone like me._ Someone who knew how to live, who'd perfected the art of holding her liquor and scoring easy dick while working a chill job. Someone to aspire to.

"Hey, Miss Yumi? You're a kickass teacher."

"A compliment? Gonna take more than that to score an easy A with me, kiddo."

"Oh fuck off!"

"You first. We're at your stop."

Audrey and Momo looked out into the heart of Glenberry's Mexican ghetto and the diva cursed. _Of course freakin' Delrio lives in a freakin' apartment building!_ Shit, which suite belonged to the witch?

"Getting cold feet?" Aiko checked.

"No, I'm going. Gotta end this nightmare one way or another." She handed her prof a wad of cash and hopped out with Momo.

"Hey, Belrose?" Miss Yumi's face was suddenly grave. "The student who was assaulted yesterday? It was Zoey Greene."

"Yeah, so?"

"Pretty messed up what happened to her, don't ya think?"

Audrey said nothing.

"Audrey … when you were on campus yesterday –"

"You saying I did that to her?"

"I'm saying … look, I know I'm shit in the classroom but I like to think I know a few things about bad decisions. And I'm the last one who's gonna haul you to the police or send you for counselling, okay?" The university teacher leaned forward.

"Kiddo, if you need to talk –"

"I'm fine," she bristled. "Just something I gotta finish."

Miss Yumi sighed and took a defeated swig from her thermos. "Whatever you say. Here's wishing you luck getting up to this girl's place."

Audrey waved her off, noting the Asian woman's stylish jacket. _Mint green, not a bad wardrobe colour..._

"Master, look!"

Audrey followed Momo's skirt tugging to the glass-lined apartment lobby, where a familiar soot-black silhouette monitored the street traffic. One of the shadow freaks, standing guard like a front lobby bellhop! It met her red eyes and retreated in vapor form towards the stairs.

"It's gonna warn Delrio! Momo, let's go!"

The cat-girl did her shadow-sneak beneath the front door and let Audrey inside. Spell tag at the ready, Audrey charged the black humanoid, and in turn it bolted into the stairwell. Their chase continued up four floors – it was a slow-moving bugger, lingering at each floor as though waiting to see how far she would pursue it.

 _Idiot,_ Audrey grinned. This shadow freak was leading them straight to its hideout! Sure enough, it raced into the apartment hallways, sprinting to a door at the far end of the hall. The black demon slithered under the frame, assuming the locked door would keep her out.

Audrey barricaded the door with spell tags. _Just you, me and my Momo,_ she trumpeted.

"One last time, cat. Get me in there and let's find that anchor."

* * *

"Oh my god, what's with all the magical Muppets?"

Kyanna's place wasn't an apartment, it was a walk-in closet! The living room could be crossed in five paces and it was party central for every invisible magic creature under the Sky Garden sun! Oily-winged cawglers roosted atop the TV and cheapo, Swedish shelving units, bulbous-eyed quee-quay mantises wailed around the baby's crib and manic little bib-bobbers chased one another around the coffee table. All of them were screeching or crying or singing creepy nursery rhymes at the top of their supernatural lungs like it was happy hour at the karaoke bar.

Audrey ducked as a griblin springboarded from the couch, narrowly missing her head. "This isn't an apartment, this is a magical zoo on crack!"

"There's a super ton of strong feelings in here," Momo agreed. The cat girl eyed the scampering bib-bobbers, tensing like she wanted to join their chasing game.

The shadow silhouette stood with them at the door, a silent witness to the madness. With the exit warded off by magic, it couldn't escape but without its master's orders it seemed incapable of further action. Its passive, black maw followed Audrey as she kicked aside the animals in her path.

"So much crap…" The floor was littered with baby toys too. "Cat, how am I supposed to know what's the anchor?"

"You'll be able t'feel it, Master. Just like the spell scroll ink we made!"

Right, she'd been able to see the magical mana throbbing from those ground-up bugs. This time she just had adjust her sights to search for something cold and dark. She offered a black smile to the shadow freak.

"I'm gonna fuck up your anchor and you're gonna be the first to go 'poof'!"

The black demon only continued to observe. _Infuriating bastard._

They split up, Momo investigating the bedroom while Audrey dug through the cramped galley kitchen, throwing open cupboards and rifling through drawers. There were some gross, unwashed plates in the sink but nothing seemed to give off any "dark and evil" vibes. _How'm I supposed to concentrate when all these magic pets keep screeching?_

"Keep it down, you freaks!" God, now she was sounding like Nikki on one of her 'no-fun, I hate partying' rants.

And another thing, where were all the scorubs? Kyanna's pad catered to every emotion eater under the sun - flutterflies included! - but she couldn't spy one of those miserable, black cockroaches that powered the shadow's anchor.

Well, if she couldn't find the specific artifact to smash…

 _SMASH._

Fancy, old-looking China plates? Audrey chucked them to the floor.

 _SMASH._

Souvenir glasses engraved with Mexican writing? She made a game of nailing the cackling griblins with each tumbler. Shit phased right through the little creepers, joining the China on the floor in pieces.

 _SMASH._

Delrio kept her liquor cabinet above the fridge. Audrey stood on a chair and seized each bottle around the neck, tossing them over shoulder so gravity could do its dirty work.

Naturally, she swigged a mouthful of each before letting go. No sense being wasteful, right?

 _Tequila tastes like shit and what is this rum? Appleton's?_ Fuck, she was doing the world a favor shattering this crap!

"Where's yer ancher?" she slurred at the dimwit shadow. "Momo, find anythin' evil?"

"No, Master but Momo found these super comfy kitty earmuffs!"

Momo bounded into the living room to give a proud little runway show with her new headpiece – black cups covering her upright ears and an elastic strap tucked around her chin. Audrey scowled deeply.

"Momo, that's a bra!"

The cat-girl's smile faltered as she took in the shattered glasses and plates. "Master, how'd it get so messy in here?" Her nose rankled. "Master, your breath is stinky-poo! Are you drinking grown up juice?"

"Never mind, lemmie see that." She held Kyanna's underwear up to the light. "Holy shit, look at the size of these titty baskets! You could smother a guy with all this lace! Where'd you find this?"

Momo guided her to the bedroom, where Audrey discovered an entire drawer full of obscene bras and panties.

"Oh my god, no wonder bitch is living in the ghetto; can't stop spending her cash on freaky underwear! Will you look at this shit? Like a porno costume closet in here!"

 _Wait!_ What was that flash of gold at the bottom? Shoving Kyanna's foul-smelling lingerie aside, Audrey seized a tiny, golden locket on a chain. "I think we've got something, Momo."

The locket wasn't giving off any 'possessed by eldritch evil' vibes but it was definitely old as balls. The portrait inside was black and white, some wrinkly-ass East Indian baba. _Thought Delrio was Mexican, though…_

"Master, someone's coming!"

Audrey sensed it too because all the magical critters in the living room suddenly shut up. It was the reverend hush of household pets sensing their owner's return. Now she could hear the creak of footsteps, voices too! A whining baby's keen, a mother's soft and reassuring coos.

"I gotcha, Philly. Almost there."

The magical zoo clambered to the door, jostling to be the first to greet Delrio. _Shit, shit, shit!_ Audrey flapped her arms in panic.

"Delrio's back already!"

"Nyaa! Trouble, trouble, trouble!"

Both girls made a break for the front door, only to hear Kyanna's keys jingling. They dashed back to the bedroom and while Audrey's eyes darted for an escape route, another voice, soft and timid spoke up.

"I can carry Philip if you want, Kyanna."

"Naw I got this, Bels. Hey, thanks a bunch for playing chauffer today. So much easier with an extra set of hands. After that doctor's trip, I know my little _conejito's_ gonna feel all better."

Even from the bedroom, Audrey could sense the softer voice hesitate.

"Well, I should get going…"

"Stay!" Delrio exclaimed. "I got the whole day off and this guy's gonna go down for a nap pretty soon. We could … y'know…"

Every critter went silent and gossip-hungry at that promising morsel. The tequila swirling around Audrey's brain finished Delrio's thought.

 _'We could, y'know, make a final push to have the shadow freaks kill Tiffany.'_ Delrio wasn't acting alone, she had a second magic user helping her! This was a witch's coven!

"So?" Delrio pressed.

"I don't know..."

"What's with you? You've been keeping your distance ever since the accident. Do Philly's stitches really freak you out that much?"

"No, it's not that! I just ... have some things on my mind."

" _You've_ got things on your mind? For god's sake, Beli, I could have lost my boy! I'm barely holding together here! I just … don't flake out on me, okay? I need you, _belleza_."

"I … guess I can come in for a bit."

"Now that's more like it! … Hey, who put these stickers on my door?"

 _Shit._ The door wrenched open and Delrio barged in, baby in one hand, groceries in the other. A tall, mousy-looking Indian woman in weird red robes followed. Neither noticed the magical menagerie cheering their return. Their eyes were transfixed on the kitchen.

"My dishes!"

"Kyanna, someone's been here!"

" _Maldito!_ Who the hell did this?"

"Me, that's who!"

Momo tugged at her skirt in protest but Audrey's veins thrummed with liquid courage. She marched into the living room feeling bold and ballsy. _Why should I goddamn hide?_ The game was up! Around her dainty fingers she twirled the irreplaceable treasure that would guarantee Delrio let her walk scott free.

The Indian chick recognized the twirl of gold. "My _awa's_ necklace!"

"Belrose? What're you - ?" Delrio's Latin eyes hardened over with vile hate. "What did you do to my apartment?"

"What's it look like, you blind-ass bitch? I ripped apart your Barbie whore-house playset until I found just what I needed. Now move your wasted ass and let me go before I smash this to pieces!"

Miss India flinched but Delrio didn't budge. Her body tensed, a wild animal ready to pounce and Audrey felt the tiniest chink of reality worm into her boozy armor.

 _If she didn't have that kid and those bags in her hands, she'd beat the shit out of me…_

" _Cabrón_ , are you drunk?"

"Drunk? Fuck you, I'm seeing everything clear now." She tried not to wobble as she stepped forward, reciting the wisdom passed down from her dream.

"You hate us all so much! You sent your shadow freaks after me because you can't stand how fucking fabulous I am! You beat the crap out of Zoey because she walked out on her salon appointment! And as for Tiffany -"

"You little shit, is that why you're here? Tiffany Maye? God dammit, I told you I never did anything to –"

"Don't fucking interrupt, you toothless bitch! _You tried to kill Tiffany!_ Couldn't be happy with just wrecking her reputation, could you? Had to go and shove her in front of a god-damn bus! And _you_ helped!"

The Indian girl wilted under Audrey's accusing glare. Delrio, meanwhile, had reached her capacity for bullshit. Shoving her groceries and baby into the arms of her friend, she lunged forward.

Audrey dodged but Delrio came back with something more precious than a fistful of her hair.

"Master, help!"

Audrey's heart dropped. "Momo!"

Held up by the fuzzy collar of her tank top, Momo flailed uselessly in Kyanna's grip, a helpless house cat to the Latina's eyes. Cracks splintered throughout Audrey's liquor-fueled armor. _She can't shift to shadow mode, no walls or floors!_ The cat-girl looked human-sized but she was just as lightweight and frail as a real kitten.

And Delrio's eyes crackled with the recklessness of a feral momma bear.

"Drop the necklace, Belrose."

"Drop the cat or you'll get it!"

"No Master, smash the anchor!"

"K-Kyanna, let's all just take a deep breath and calm -"

"Fuck calming down, that's my cat!"

"That's my _belleza's_ necklace!"

 _Wait, what?_ And why was princess Jasmine suddenly red with embarrassment?

"Oh fuck this," Audrey decided. "Momo, brace yourself – I'm gonna flash these bitches some virgin priestess power! _Doki Doki Heartbeat Barrage!_ "

The ensuing silence was made all the more awkward by the ballerina pose Audrey had struck.

" _Qué?_ "

Audrey tried again. " _Cure Shine Express! Moon Tiara Flash!_ " She threw out ever cutesy-poo rhyme she could think of but Kyanna refused to dissolve like the damn wicked witch she was!

" _Jesucristo_ , are you drunk _and_ high, _chica_?"

 _I'm not,_ Audrey realized. With every failed war cry, her alcohol armor splintered further. As Momo squirmed for release and Delrio squeezed the scruff of her neck, Audrey's defenses shattered and fell.

Starring into Momo's terrified eyes, Audrey had never felt more sober.

"Oh God... Kyanna, let's just ... put the cat down, please?" The locket trembled in her hands.

"Drop it," Delrio repeated.

"Okay, okay!" Her words babbled out like tears. "I'm putting it down, I'm putting it down. Just … don't hurt my cat! Not Momo!"

"Master, you gotta smash it. Don't worry about Momo – save your friend!"

" _I am!"_

Delrio, only hearing Audrey's half of the conversation, muttered something about a ' _maldito_ _borracha.'_

"Beli, pass Philly to me and go get your necklace. Beli?"

But the Indian girl stood paralyzed. She'd cracked ever since Audrey's accusation and now she mirrored the trembling, brain-splitting horror Audrey felt.

"Kyanna … this is my fault."

The Indian girl – Beli – clutched at her hair and fell to her knees.

"Your apartment … this girl … I did this!"

 _It is her,_ Audrey realized. _She's the shadow master!_

"Kyanna, after Philly was hurt, I – I had to do something! I know it was an accident but I just kept thinking _'what if that babysitter gets someone else hurt?'_ What if it's another baby? Because I didn't do anything? The accident … Kyanna, I told Nora. I told her everything."

Kyanna's eyes widened in horror.

"Nora? Nora Delrio? You went to my no-account, drug-dealing cousin and – _Maldito_ , Beli, she is _not_ part of this family anymore!"

"She said – she said she'd take care of things for us."

"Beli, Nora takes care of things with a god-damn switchblade!" Kyanna tore the air with Mexicanese curses. " _Buen dios_ , she must have been speed-dialing every daycare and parent group in the state, telling them messed-up shit about Tiffany. Right up her alley too… _Abuela_ caught her sending death threats to my ex-boyfriend in high school, you know that?"

"I … I had to do something!"

"You went behind my back!"

"I've been trying to tell you but –"

The two women continued on and on, yelling at and pleading with each other. In the commotion, Momo found herself plunked to the floor. She immediately scampered over to Audrey's awaiting hug.

"Momo's okay, Master. Don't cry."

"Something in my goddamn eye, cat. More importantly, what the hell's going on here?"

The Indian girl – Belsi? – had started up the rumor mill about Tiffany so was Delrio actually controlling the shadow silhouettes? And if so, why wasn't she ordering her minion to throttle her back-stabbing friend?

Said shadow minion was ignoring the living room drama entirely in favor of strolling into the kitchen. One bottle of whiskey had merely bounced – not broken – against the floor. Inspecting the year and label, it nodded to itself and pocketed the booze in its chest cavity.

Audrey and Momo watched it stroll out the open door without a backwards glance to either of its supposed masters. Audrey glanced down at the golden locket, the supposed key to the shadow's existence.

"But … but my dream said … My dream told me -"

"Master… you did have a whole buncha grown-up juice last night…"

Oh God, she could feel the hangover headache creeping over her brain!

A happy cheer from the bib-bobbers squeezed her brain even harder. Over by the door, Cianna and Belsi had reached some sort of forgiveness. The Indian chick was still sobbing but now Delrio was hugging her, rubbing her back and comforting her, giving Audrey the weirdest flashbacks to Nikki and Celeste.

"It's okay … I'm sorry I yelled… you were just looking out for Philly, Bels. It's okay."

"Sorry… I'm so sorry…"

Audrey gagged.

"What the crap is this Disney channel happy family hug time? It's like you two're fuck buddies or something."

Delrio shot her the ugliest _shut the fuck up_ glare ever.

"Wait, seriously? You're taking princess Jasmine's magic carpet to the cleaners? Eww! For fuck's sake, when did every hoe in this town suddenly turn into a god-damn, dirty lesbian?"

Delrio, gentle as a lamb, kissed the Indian girl on the forehead. "Bels, we'll talk, okay? But right now, I need you to do something for me. Okay?"

"Okay…"

Kyanna shut the front door and flicked the lock shut.

"Call the police. Tell them to send an ambulance too."

"Ambulance?"

Kyanna was already stalking forward. Momo's tail sprang stiff and Audrey found herself backpedalling before the ferocious mama bear.

"H-hey, no hard feelings, right? You dykes get to 'make up and make out', right? It all worked out, didn't it?"

Audrey's heels wobbled on broken glass. Kyanna kept marching forward.

"All this kitchen shit, I can pay, you know that? I'll – I'll buy you new stuff! Non-crappy stuff!"

Her back bumped against the kitchen counter.

"Okay, you wanna go? Let's go bitch! I've been waiting ages to pay you back for your crappy, hack-job haircuts so let's settle this right here, right n–"

Out of the blue, Kyanna's fist hooked her sharp across the nose.

The last image Audrey remembered was ruby droplets dancing through the air.

Then the world spun.

Momo cried out her name.

The kitchen floor came rushing at her face.


	12. The Shadow Master Unveiled

The cops insisted she wasn't out cold long, that she wasn't hurt badly. In their words, "just a little nose bleed, princess."

 _Just a fucking nose bleed?_ Blood was gushing down her face, she was bawling with pain and she'd probably suffered a concussion or gotten tetanus or Mexican whooping cough from breathing Delrio's diseased, ghetto air! The paramedics had arrived on scene but for some shitty reason they let the blue-suited pigs drag her from the apartment, kicking and screaming towards the parked cruiser.

Momo was nowhere to be found.

At the precinct, the two officers sat her down in one of those cold and bare interrogation rooms straight from a TV procedural. Without even offering her a chance to wash her ruined face, they launched into a laundry list of questions. "What were you doing in Miss Delrio's apartment?"

 _Don't fucking say anything,_ she told her raggedly-breathing body. She knew the score – daddy's dinner stories about his business 'close calls' had taught her better than any stuffy university prof: the pigs couldn't make you say anything; they weren't even allowed to ask questions if you didn't have legal counsel.

"Give me my phone, you son of a bitch. I wanna call my dadd- my lawyer."

The first cop nodded. While his partner fetched her belongings, she felt his gross-ass eyes roving up and down her bare and bloody legs. "Of course, of course. Let's see if we can't find your phone, shall we?"

They dumped her purse onto the table, shook out every last crinkled candy wrapper and ragged shoe-shopping receipt until they found what they were after.

Her alcohol flask. Public intoxication was a prosecutable offense, was she aware?

 _Shit._

Her baggie of weed. Was she aware that marijuana was a controlled substance in this state?

 _Double shit._

Zoey's flash drive. The mayor had issued a zero-tolerance policy for the possession and distribution of child pornography. Was Miss Belrose aware?

 _Shit, shit, fucking shit!_ Why had Miss Jessie started camming so young?

Then the interrogation shifted topics: What were you doing this past weekend? You stayed at home? A classmate identified you as being on campus, can anyone corroborate your alibi? No? Interesting. Can you describe your relationship with a "Miss Greene"? Just classmates? Witnesses describe you verbally assaulting this woman in class and at the mall. Very interesting. You'd love to take a swing at her, wouldn't you? Love to take a two-by-four to that smug bitch's legs, wouldn't you?

Audrey clamped her hands over her ears and clenched her eyes. "Shut up, shut up! Shut the fuck up, I didn't touch that bitch and you can't prove it was me in the video!"

"Video? And what video would that be, Miss Belrose?"

 _Fuck..._

In the end, she didn't give them an inch. She had to bite down on her fingers and threaten to scream 'rape' if they didn't stop eye-fucking her legs but she didn't give them anything.

Nodding smugly, the cops stood her up and marched her further into the station.

* * *

"Let me OUTTA here!"

Audrey's pounding on the metal door went unanswered. The holding cell was a bricked-over garbage hole - no windows, no exits - and they'd locked her inside. The stench of vomit violated her nose and the hard, concrete floor made her bare legs shiver. There was a cot and toilet in the corner but she didn't dare touch those. _Probably crawling with bugs or diseases._

Audrey railed her fists against the cell door until her skin broke but the cops refused to answer. She banged and screamed bloody murder hour after hour but nobody answered.

The silence scared her more than any druggie or rapist they could have thrown in as a cellmate. _They're gonna let me out … right?_

"Momo?" Audrey's voice scraped against her shivering throat. "Momo, you're out there, right? You're okay?"

The cold, concrete walls gave no reply.

* * *

When the door finally creaked open to the tune of "bail's been paid", Audrey was a shivering, twitchy shell of herself. Realizing she was being set free, she almost threw herself at the escorting officer.

 _Tuesday afternoon,_ she realized when they handed over her belongings and she checked the time stamp on her phone. They'd left her to rot an entire night and day in that hellhole. _Where's Momo? Why didn't she -_

"Your family's in the front lobby," grunted the desk clerk. Audrey froze in place.

 _Oh crap…_

* * *

The ride home in daddy's Rolls-Royce strained her sense of time – another agonizing eternity in the back seat of a police cruiser. Audrey made herself as small as possible against the leather upholstery, stealing trembling glances at her parents. Kasumi had been dragged along for the ride and stared out the passenger window in complete disinterest. Daddy focused solely on the road. He wouldn't talk to her, wouldn't acknowledge her. He simply stared ahead while his white-knuckled fists throttled the leather-lined steering wheel.

"D-daddy-?"

Without warning, he spun the car hard right. Audrey screeched along with the brakes, nearly cracking her head against the window as the luxury vehicle was yanked to the side of the road. Her father wrenched the stick into park, threw off his seat belt and whipped around to face her for the first time.

"Do you know how god damn embarrassing that was for me? To march into that station - that they built with _my donations_ \- and have to smile and play dumb while the commissioner explains how my daughter was picked up for breaking and entering?"

"Daddy, I –"

"Vandalism? Drug possession? Public intoxication? And then he tells me you're a person of interest in an assault case? That you beat up a black girl with a heart condition?"

"I didn't touch –"

" _Enough!_ " Daddy's fat hand waved up and down her ragged skin and blood-stained clothes in disgust. "I don't know you anymore. I don't know my own daughter anymore. I don't know what the hell is going on with this family!"

In the passenger seat, Kasumi gave a dry snort. "Try coming home more often."

"Oh because you are _such_ a pleasure to come home to – scraping by and wasted out of your mind because you _won't_ _take your god-damn pills_!"

While her parents went on bickering and sniping, Audrey inched herself into the corner of the back seat, searching the tinted windows for relief. A four-legged scamper across the sidewalk caught her attention. "Momo?"

Black ears on chocolatey-brown hair perked at her name. Audrey rattled the door handle - locked. "Momo, I'm coming!"

With the flick of a driver's side button, the locks snapped shut once more. "Where do you think you're going?" her father demanded. "We're going home and you're going straight to your room, young lady!"

 _Young lady?_ "Seriously? You're grounding me?"

"Grounded!" Her father repeated. "Not only that, I'm taking your car, your allowance and I'm cancelling all those back-ordered dresses and shoes!"

" _What?_ You can't do that! They're mine!"

"They were bought with _my money!_ Now sit down and put on your seat belt!"

"Momo's out there! I've gotta get her!"

"You will do as you're told, young lady."

Audrey dove at the door handle, rattling impotently against the driver-controlled locks. "You just wanna lock me up again! Let me out! Let me the god-damn fuck out!"

Her father bellowed orders to 'sit down'. Momo's kitten hands banged against the car door. Exhausted, Kasumi rolled her eyes and hit a front console button.

The locks clicked open.

Audrey bolted.

"Master!" Momo sprang into her arms and Audrey returned the furious hug. She had time enough to spare a confused glance at the drunken mother who'd sprung her chains. She'd never lower herself to thank the bitch but Audrey settled for a nod of acknowledgement. Behind the tinted window, Kasumi rolled her eyes. She was already hunting through her purse for a mickey.

Then her father shoved his fat body out of the car and Audrey had to run.

* * *

While her heels pounded the pavement, the sky rumbled with the opening tremors of a thunderstorm.

"Momo looked everywhere for you, Master! Momo tried scaring off the bad police men but they poked Momo with a sleepy-dart! When Momo woke up, she was in a cage somewhere far away!"

 _Tranquilized_ , Audrey realized. _Had to prison break her way out of the dog pound._ God dammit, what if some mutt had bittern her Momo? "Fuck the police and my shitty-ass dad! C'mon, cat, we gotta lay low for a bit."

 _Sláinte Smiles_ bar and lounge. She'd visited once before with one of her more attractive boy-wallets. The Irish watering hole was a swankier dive, not the pounding lights or hardcore music of Lusties, just lacquered wooden booths, the clank of pool tables and the stink of midlife regrets. This was where adults came to drown their sorrows.

The bar was crowded with hunched-over depressives but alcohol was the last thought on Audrey's mind. She ushered Momo to a corner booth so she could sit and collect her thoughts.

"Momo's so glad you're okay, Master."

"Cat, nothing is okay! Delrio's pressing charges against me, the cops think I beat up Zoey and daddy's got it in his head that I'm not his perfect little angel any more! I am _beyond_ fucked. My life is over!"

"But Master, didn't the police men let you go?"

"On bail, cat! That just means they give you one last chance to get shit-faced before your ass gets hauled to court and they …" She collapsed into her trembling hands. "They're gonna throw me in jail… and daddy's gonna let them…"

She'd been in bad scrapes before but someone had always bailed her out - Tiffany, Celeste, daddy. Now she'd burned through all her goodwill and carefully managed appearances. She had nothing, no one to turn to. "He left me in there…" Daddy always came running to her rescue; how pissed was he that he allowed her to rot in a cell overnight?

She checked her phone, tried connecting to the Internet but her data plan had already been terminated. _Daddy moves quickly for such a fat bastard._ Her credit cards were probably cancelled too. She could feel the phantom noose tightening: she could either crawl back home on hands and knees or wait for the cops to pick her up as a missing person. Either way, all that awaited her was a cold and endless future in a locked room, ignored, unwanted and forgotten.

"I just wanted to save Tiffany, cat."

"Maybe there's still time, Master! We just gotta find the Shadow Master and –"

" _How?_ It's not Zoey, it's not Kyanna; it's not even that Indian bitch she's eating out! I don't fucking know who's pulling the strings!"

Momo weathered her fire and fury with complete calm. "Then maybe Master and Momo have'ta take another lookie at the clues." Damn that hopeless, kitty-cat optimism. The cat-girl pounced onto the table, staring her down like a hard-boiled sleuth.

"When did Master first see the shadow monsters?"

"Five, six nights ago at Lusties. Right after I met you."

"How come it was there?"

"I don't fucking know! Someone - this Master freak - they sent it to attack me!"

"Did they? Momo thought it was just playing in the garbage an' not hurting nobody until Master yelled at it."

"Yeah but –" No, it had been minding its own business, gathering up cigarettes, hadn't it? "Well, it … probably would have hurt someone if I hadn't got its attention first!"

Momo bounced forward. "An' after that?"

"Oh, like you don't fucking know: on campus. It chased me, it stole my purse. Sacked the dean in his hundred year-old nuts and would've ripped me to pieces if you didn't shank it first."

"How come it wanted to hurt the old man?"

"Cause he was in the way? I don't fucking know!"

"No, Master, they can't just hurt strangers 'cause they feel like it. They hafta follow their orders!"

Come to think of it, attacking Tiffany would have been a whole lot easier if the shadows had simply bashed aside cars and knocked pedestrians out of their path. "Well maybe the dean flunked out their master. I dunno!"

The great cat detective pounced onto the next clue. "After that?"

"Ugh, third time was at the mall. I thought it was after me but it was really going for –" Audrey winced, unwilling to relive that memory. "Look, can we just keep going?"

"What else? Before the shadow got told to go hurt Master's friend, how come it was at the shoppy-place?'

"I dunno, picking through the trash? Wait … fast food! It was grabbing all the thrown out fast food!" Cigs, cheap food – were these shadows gathering potion ingredients in their downtime? Tobacco and animal fat for some demonic ritual?

The motives behind their other appearances were straight-forward: lurking at the hospital to finish off Tiffany, ghosting onto on campus to snap Zoey's legs. Staking out Kyanna's apartment to make a fool of her and to grab some booze. "What's your point?" Audrey grunted.

"Master, Momo doesn't think the shadows wanna hurt you."

Audrey leveled the cat her driest, saltiest ' _what're you smoking?'_ stink-eye.

"Master, every time you saw the shadow monsters, there were always doin' somethin' else: looking for smokey sticks, looking for foodsies or lookin' fer bottles of grown-up juice. Some of them got upset with you, but only after you super-bothered them or tried to trap them, Master. The one we saw this weekend only hurt Misses Zoey - who Master wanted to hurt - and the one at Misses Kyanna's apartment showed you to her place when you got lost."

The cat raised a leg to scratch at her neck while she presented her conclusion: "Master, it's almost like the shadows wanna help you."

Had she the strength, Audrey's fist would have shattered the table.

"What, you're saying these are _my_ shadows? That I'm their master and I'm giving them marching orders? Then what's the anchor I'm using to control them, huh? My phone? My purse? And why the hell'd they be listening to me anyway? Kyu said their magic comes from scorubs, and those things only hang around mopey emo freaks! Do I look like I'm suicidal and depressed?"

The cat-girl averted her eyes.

"And even if I _was_ ordering them around subconsciously or when I'm sleeping, why would I make them … I mean, Christ, why would I want Tiffany –? Ugh, this doesn't make a god-damn lick of sense!"

The migraines scorching her head threatened to burn down her skull but before she could find any relief, the stomping boots of a barmaid with an axe to grind invaded their corner booth.

"Oi! Wot shet ye been smokin', ye daft, bloody tart? We don' 'tallow no cats in here. Whotcha thinkin', this be a fookin' bahnyard?"

Audrey squinted at the freckle-snouted ginger and her impenetrable accent. "What, Momo? Like hell I'm leaving her outside! Fuck off and get me a drink."

But the bloody barmaid kept hounding her with 'regulations-this' and 'sanitary conditions-that' and just when Audrey felt her brain about to burst into flames, a cool, Tiffany-like hand on her shoulder steadied her from making a scene.

 _Miss Jessie?_

Tiffany's mom flashed her a quick wink and took charge of the situation. "It's a therapy cat, Siobhan. You can look the other way this once, pretty-please?"

The bartender – Shivawn, or whatever – crossed her arms and stewed but the blonde actress had perfected her pleading puppy-dog eyes. She relented with an uneasy sigh.

"T'all right, Missus Maye but if the boss comes in an' gets a gander of that farry, flea-barrin' shet, God as my witness, ye'll be squarin' yer tab t'night."

"Aww, you're a sweetie, Siobhan. Bring us a bottle of the regular? Kisses!"

As soon as the waitress was out of earshot, Miss Jessie killed the kindness. "First round's on you, hon."

"Y-yeah, sure. I mean, whatever."

Audrey couldn't get over how alien Miss Jessie looked – a plain, buttoned-down blouse, flats and a pleated, ankle-length skirt that fully concealed her legs. It was like she was suddenly dressing the role of a conservative mother to make up for years of misspent partying. Scorubs crawled up and down her bare arms, relishing the taste of maternal pain and sadness.

"Saw you from the bar," she commented. "If you're keeping a low profile, maybe try _not_ yelling at your cat in a crowded pub. You look like shit, hon."

Momo relocated to Audrey's side as Miss Jessie slid a wet wipe across the table. Audrey seized the small gift and went about wiping the blood from her face. "Um, about the other day –"

"The doctors say my baby's stable. No better but stable. Relax, I'm not here to beat you up, hon. Looks like you've punished yourself plenty already."

Audrey glanced at her ruined clothes and shrugged. "S'nothing. And anyway, Delrio punches like a girl." A sudden thought reminded Audrey to fish through her purse and slide a worn USB stick across the table.

"For you. I kinda found someone who found one of your early videos. Figured you'd want the copy."

The older woman took her time lighting a cigarette before dropping the memory stick into her purse. "Mmm, didn't peg you for a Misty fan."

"I'm not! I like dick, okay? Don't get me wrong, you're totally awesome. I mean, you get paid to have hot sex. What's not to like?"

Miss Jessie blew out her cigarette smoke. "How about the part where my daughter treats me like a ghost, refuses to visit or speak to me for four years?"

Oh, yeah. That part.

"I thought we were getting somewhere, reconnecting. Then –"

She shook her head and retreated to her cigarette. Even Miss Jessie didn't have the stomach to verbalize Tiffany's fate. Audrey watched the scorubs pitter-pattering down her arm and to her fingers, investigating the glowing ash that fueled so much despair.

 _Did you hate her?_ Audrey wondered _. Were you upset with Tiff? Even if it was just an instant, did you wish she would –?_

Fuck, no. She was pulling at strings and coming up threadbare.

Siobhan, the bartender bitch, interrupted her conspiracy theories a second time, marching up to the table with the oddest bottle of alcohol Audrey had ever seen. The white flask looked ceramic instead of glass, and it was decorated in elegant blue writing that reminded her of the Asian characters Momo had trained her to paint onto her spell tags. She was pretty sure she recognized the symbol for 'relief'.

The bottle was accompanied by a pair of tiny and handle-lacking tea cups the size of shot glasses. Siobhan filled Miss Jessie's cup with utmost care – two hands on the bottle pouring a cascade of clear liquid that spun into the cup without a wasted drop.

For Audrey, she plunked the bottle down and shoved it her way with a dirty glare. "Sarve yer fookin' self, ye posh cunt."

"Sheep fucker," Audrey muttered back.

The ginger freak must have hexed the bottle. One pour and it splashed over the rim and into Audrey's lap. Miss Jessie chuckled at the amateur-hour technique.

"Trouble _holding_ your liquor, hon?"

"Oh piss off and drink your stupid drink. You're lucky I'm paying for this swill." Momo pawed over some serviettes and Audrey snatched them up immediately. Miss Jessie rested a hand on her cheek and smiled fondly as she watched the futile cleaning.

"Audrey Belrose: _prickly around the edges but she does right by her friends._ Hm-hmm, my baby had you pegged down to a tee. You know, Tiffany and I started talking again this year – little meet-ups for coffee, chats over the phone. She'd mention you all the time."

"Who, me?" Miss Jessie smiled at how that comment caught her off guard.

"M-hmm. Always whenever something had her stressing. She'd be finishing an assignment or cramming for a test and she'd call me up at all sorts of crazy hours, scared to bits that she'd fail, flunk out and ruin her life forever."

Miss Jessie smiled wistfully. "Then she'd take a deep breath, get herself centered and say, 'mom, I gotta to tough it out. I've gotta be strong like Audrey'."

That sent her gagging. "Strong like me? Seriously? 'Kay, your daughter must've been smoking some seriously crazy shit if she thought –"

One sharp, motherly glare - _language, young lady -_ killed Audrey's ramblings on the spot.

"I mean… Tiffany's the strong one. Perfect grades, perfect looks; always keeps up a smile. Me? I'm just the fucking train wreck she has to keep bailing out." _What's Tiff even see in me? Why'd she ever want to -?_

Miss Jessie seemed to sense her discomfort. "Take it from an actress, honey – if you can sell yourself strong, that's half the battle."

"I guess." She thought back to Tiffany's drunken make-out at Lusties, at her ruinous sobbing under the shower. Seemed even someone as devoted to excellence as Tiffany Maye had some scorubs scuttling in her back closet.

Audrey took a proper swig from her Asian tea cup and promptly coughed up the god-awful swill. "Ugh, bitter!"

"It's sake," Miss Jessie explained as she sipped an elegant thimbleful. "Japanese rice wine. A friend of mine introduced me to it. One of those drinks you've got to be in the mood for."

"I guess. If you want a drink that makes you feel like crap."

"Funny, my friend said something just like that: ' _They grow it from shit, it tastes like shit and it reminds you that you're nothing but shit.'_ "

"You're friend's a fucking wreck," Audrey growled. Still, the sharp flavor was growing on her. Grabbing the drink menu, Audrey thumbed through the listings, looking for a brand name she could memorize for her very last trip to the liquor store.

The menu clattered to the floor.

"Nyaa? M-master?"

"Hon, you okay? Look like you've seen a ghost."

They were right to be worried. Her hand was paralyzed on the spot, seizing up in tremors as the blood drained from her face. When Momo's prodding head startled her back to life, Audrey jolted to her feet and started searching her purse for cash.

"I gotta go," she mumbled, tossing a random wad on the table.

"Go? Baby, you sure you're all right? I can call a cab or an Uber-"

"NO! Fine. I'm fine. I'll walk. Gonna walk it off. Momo?"

The cat-girl nipped attentively at her heels. "Master, where're we going?"

Audrey didn't reply right away. She was piggy-backing on the pub's free Wi-Fi to make one last, all-important map search. Her fingers stabbed at the screen, burning the address to memory.

"Across town. We can make it if we run."

"Nyaa? But Master, it's gonna start raining!"

"Who the fuck cares about some shitty-ass rain, cat?" Her words hit like a cloudburst but her eyes were small and terrified.

"I … I know who it is," she swallowed. "I know who sent the shadows after Tiffany."

* * *

"Open up! Open the fuck up!"

Audrey pounded on the ratty apartment door as though her fists alone could break the final barrier protecting the Shadow Master. The dim, flickering hallway lights couldn't disguise the dull and peeling wallpaper or mask the mile-wide stench of old kush. The super-cheap rental complex wasn't exactly 'evil lair' material but she'd been burned by too many bad calls to take anything at face value.

Momo sensed it too, tail stiff and hackles raised. Something evil lingered behind this door.

" _Open up!_ " Audrey hammered both fists into the wood and stood there shivering, willing her fury to hold, to hide her terror just a little longer. "I know it's you! The one controlling the shadow freaks, the one stirring up all this shit, the one who –" _Tiffany…_ "God dammit, all this time it was _you_!" The answer had been staring her in the face this whole fucking time and for all the magic of her virgin priestess second sight, she'd been blind to see it!

"You were always there with me, always listening, always knowing what I was gonna do! You gonna play dumb and ignore me now? I know you can hear me so just -"

A lock clicked, a chain rattled. Audrey released her fists and stepped back as the door creaked inward. The two shadow creatures posted as guards glared down upon her with their formless, abyssal faces.

Then a stomp and a shove parted the two thundercloud sentries. The Shadow Master appraised the black-haired girl on her doorstep, dress bloody and hands trembling. She jerked a thumb towards her two minions.

"You can see them?"

"Yeah, I can see them," Audrey grunted back. "I can see _everything._ "

A swig of booze. A long and thoughtful swallow.

"Well, then…"

A chill ran down Audrey's spine as they stared down one another. She ground her teeth, the Shadow Master folded her arms in thought. Momo bared her fangs and the shadows assumed ready stances. A nervous glance between the two monsters betrayed the high-voltage uncertainty trembling through the participants: two magical gunslingers and their minions counting down the stroke of noon – waiting for the other to betray a twitch, a reaction, a showdown.

The Shadow Master broke first – a nod of her head that dismissed her guards. Obedient to a fault, the black silhouettes lumbered back into the apartment. Once she and Audrey were truly alone, she pushed the door open wide, motioning for the younger girl to follow her.

"I think you'd better come inside. You and me gotta lot to talk about, Belrose."

Audrey crossed the threshold and nodded.

"Yeah, we sure do, Miss Yumi."

* * *

 **Siobhan O'Riley belongs to Sirena-Voyager of DeviantArt. Many thanks to her for letting me borrow her HunieOC!**


	13. Drunk with Power

Aiko Yumi, the shadow master.

As Audrey crossed the apartment threshold, images of her physics teacher and her invisible enemy warred inside her mind, oil and water refusing to mix. Miss Yumi – chill and sarcastic as she droned over her PowerPoint slides, the one teacher Audrey had ever respected. The shadow master – merciless and cruel as she manipulated from afar, ordering her minions to break Zoey's legs and end Tiffany's life.

Aiko swept behind her to close the door on their little rendezvous. "Always wondered if someone would figure out my little secret. Damn, never figured it'd be you, Belrose. Not in a million years."

Audrey shivered as the lock twisted shut.

"Is that blood on your dress? What happened to you, kiddo?"

"Oh, like you don't know! After you dropped me off at Delrio's apartment, the bitch caught me busting in! Psycho-momma tried to skin my cat, then she nearly broke my nose and called the cops! I'm out on bail until they haul me in. I'm going to jail!"

Miss Yumi's feigned shock was almost too perfect. "Jail? Holy shit… I mean, damn. How're you holding up?"

"Don't touch me." Audrey retreated from Miss Yumi's offered hand. "I trusted you. Spilled my guts to you and _this_ is what you do to me?"

"Whoa – time out, I'm not the one who told you to break into somebody's apartment. Let's grab you a drink. I got beer, coolers –"

"I'm not here for fucking drinks, Aiko." God-dammit, one more second of this innocent act and her head was going to erupt! "Don't pussyfoot around me anymore, bitch. You know what I'm here for. I want the sake bottle."

Aiko's smile turned to stone.

"Shit, how'd you- ?"

"I know things."

"Evidently." Miss Yumi stroked her chin again, the chess master appraising the latest surprise moves on the board. "All right, seems we really do have a ton to talk over. Let's sit down, kiddo. You can … _come into my parlor_."

Even Momo knew enough to shiver at that insinuation.

* * *

Stepping from the foyer into the full apartment made Audrey flinch as though she'd dipped her toes into ice water. A perverse sense of _wrongness_ invaded her body until she shivered down to her bones. Even brave little Momo trembled and pressed tightly against her calf. Inside this domain was _something that should not be._

Miss Yumi noticed their hesitation and shrugged. "Kinda messy in here, I know."

"Kinda messy? Bitch, I know shut-ins and gross-ass cam-girls who tidy better than you!"

The entire dump reeked of apathy: crappy Swedish bookshelves and a coffee table completely blocked off by stacks of forgotten beer cans and neglected cardboard moving boxes. Bulging garbage bags spread outward from the walls like a black mold. This mess was beyond simple hoarding or forgetting to tidy. This was giving up on life!

But the garbage wasn't what made Momo hiss and spit and it wasn't discarded underwear or mere clutter that made Audrey's skull throb with nausea. "Mother fucker, they're everywhere _._ "

Scorubs.

Drowning out the carpet, swarming over the walls; Audrey's ears rang with the multitudinous click of insect legs, the paper-thin flitter of carapace-covered wings. Every nervous step she took crushed a foot worth of the black bastards and more simply filled their place, circling her high heels as they attempted to scale her legs.

"Nyaa, stay away, you meanies!" Like an overzealous bodyguard, Momo slashed and stamped a path to the couch for Audrey. Slapping a spell scroll onto the saggy cloth cushion ensured that nothing would try to crawl up her ass.

Miss Yumi did her best not to smirk at these prissy guest manners. "Relax, not like you're gonna get lice or anything." Barefoot, the teacher strode fearlessly through the insect horde towards a fold-out chair, paying no mind as the black, pulsating insects consumed her bare legs from ankles to thighs. The shadow minions from the doorway took their place at Miss Yumi's shoulders.

"Okay, all the 'serious business' here is dragging me down. You want answers, I want answers, so let's make this fun: Twenty Questions. You ask me something, I ask back."

"Seriously? After all this you want to play a fucking game?" Who the hell was she kidding? A scan of the cramped bookshelves revealed that Miss Yumi's owned more board games, puzzles and playing cards than actual books. Of course she'd want to make this fun. The bitch had been playing games with people's lives.

"I'll start - so, you the only one who can see my pups?"

"Your _pups_?"

Aiko shrugged. "Yeah, you know – puppies? Big, dumb, loyal – tell me you don't see the resemblance. C'mere, boys!"

The shadows crouched low enough for Aiko to scratch them under their chins and baby-talk to _her good boys. Who's a good boy? Yes it's you! It's you!_ The teacher was really getting into her affectionate tickling; the shadows, on the other hand, stood neutrally without any obvious signs of enjoyment or disgust. Aiko regarded her again.

"So, just you who can see 'em?"

 _She's trying to figure out how much I know,_ Audrey realized, _and if it's safe to get rid of me._

"I've got a ... friend, Kyu. She can see them too."

"Ooh, you'll have to invite her over."

 _Fat chance._ "My turn. How long have you had this power?"

"One month, five days."

"What, did you mark it in your fucking calendar?" _Happy one month anniversary since I became a death-dealing shadow witch?_

"You don't forget a night as shitty as that."

Miss Yumi said nothing more but Audrey noticed the scorubs crowd closer, skitter faster – crack addicts hungry for their drug. Whatever misery her teacher was recalling, it sent the little bastards salivating for more.

"What about you?" Miss Yumi asked suddenly. "How long have you seen 'em?"

"Almost a week now."

"A week, huh? Interesting. Hey, quick time out - who's the kid? Kinda young for pet-play, isn't she?"

"Momo? You can see her?" Even the cat-girl reared back at that information.

But then the teacher shook her head. "No, never mind, ignore me. Just your cat. For a second there I thought she was a –" but she dismissed the notion with a shake of her head. "Sorry, lately I've been seeing some weird shit. Can you believe I thought the pigeons in the park were these little gremlin shits? Hilarious, right?"

Audrey wouldn't stoop so low as to laugh along.

"Aw, c'mon – not even a smile? Okay, let's get serious. How do you know about the bottle?"

"I got some magic lessons from a perverted fairy and a talking cat."

That sent Miss Yumi howling. Audrey pressed onward.

"Your pups? They come from an anchor – that's what my friend calls anything that's soaked up a shit-ton of magical energy. Only way to make an anchor is to get something that's old and meaningful."

"What, like a high school year book?"

"Fuck, no. Not unless you had a shitty-ass time in school." Audrey shook her head clear. "I chased down so many god-damn dead ends, thinking the anchor was some family jewelry or a special pendant. I kept forgetting the anchor had to be something loaded down with a life's worth of bad vibes. Something that would attract _them._ "

She looked from her teacher to the walls of writhing insects and back again. It was all so clear now:

"You're depressed. I'm not talking emo-kid sobbing or 'oh, I had a shitty day' depressed. You hide it like a pro but you're -"

"- sick in the head?" Miss Yumi chuckled as she loosened her necktie and slid off her mint-green jacket, revealing the threadbare crop-top underneath. Her shoulders and arms were bare for only a moment before the scorubs consumed her pale flesh. "Now whatever gave you that thought?"

Audrey fought the urge to gag over Miss Yumi's bug bath. "Call it a hunch. Course, I didn't know shit until this afternoon. Went for a drink and I saw _this_ on the menu."

Audrey pulled up a snapshot of the pub's alcohol list. " _Yumi House_ sake. That's your family's brand, isn't it?"

"Ooh, guilty as charged."

"Back in your office on campus - you said you collected old booze, that you had bottles decades old."

Miss Yumi raised a hand in contention. "Ah, but collectors like the crap they horde, right? My liquor cabinet's nice to look at, fun to visit. How could they be 'magical anchors full of downer vibes'? I like my bottles."

"Not this one." Audrey narrowed her eyes. She was through asking. "Show it to me. Show me the bottle you got from your granddad."

Checkmate. There were no further counters, no more snide remarks. Miss Yumi only leaned back in her seat and drummed her fingers on the armrest, deliberating.

Finally, she motioned to her guards. "Bring it. _Carefully._ "

The shadow creatures tramped over to the highest, corner-bound bookshelf, forcefully elongating their limbs so they could retrieve the worn and scratched-up book from the top shelf. With immense delicacy, they placed it upon their mistress' lap, and only a forceful blow from Miss Yumi – to strip off the dust – kept the scorub horde from burying the book in their tar-coloured carapaces. Audrey and Momo leaned forward to catch the title.

 _Japan – A Visual Guide._

Like the textbook in Miss Yumi's office, the pages had been hacked out and hollowed to accommodate a rare bottle of alcohol. What paper and pictures remained had been defaced and scribbled over with a black sharpie marker. Miss Yumi flipped past the vandalism to remove her buried treasure.

It was ancient. The bottle Siobhan had served at the bar was ceramic, but this looked to be made from clay or pottery. A lid, some frayed tassels around the neck and a family crest stamped onto the body in bloody-red wax. Miss Yumi held up the bottle for inspection. "My parting gift from _ojii-san_."

Audrey winced. Momo had warned her she'd recognize the anchor on sight, that she'd sense its essence of black magic. _Fuck, didn't think it would be this strong._ Cold tremors seized her hands and sent her teeth chattering. Compared to the heartbeat throb from her jar of magical bug ink, this vessel was a hundred times more potent, like staring into the heart of a black sun.

"Deep breaths, Master." Momo hugged her tightly but even the cat-girl was shivering in the presence of this much dark magic. An aura of black fire pulsated from the bottle like raspy breaths from a smoker's lungs - sick and diseased but still capable of terrible strength.

Miss Yumi smirked to herself, lost in memory. "I was fifteen when my granddad tossed me overseas to live with the rest of the Yumi rejects. The old man snuck this into my luggage with a note – _'Do the right thing, Aiko'."_

She trailed a finger along the top, let the tassles drag across the veins of her wrist.

"Always told myself I'd get rid of this piece of crap pottery but whenever life turned to shit, it was the first thing I went for. Whenever I had to take out another loan to pay off my student debts, whenever my art profs told me my paintings would never sell; whenever I crawled out of the casino with another paycheque flushed down the slots. I'd come home and I'd look at it – like it was my only friend in the world. If it was a really bad day, I'd open it. Shitty days? I'd give it a sniff, swirl around the bottle and listen to it slosh around - like a whirlpool, ready to take me away."

Aiko's grin went feral. "Then I'd say, 'fuck you, _ojii-san_ , I made it another day'."

The mood went somber. From the carpet, Aiko's shadow minions fished out a discarded mug, dusted off the scorubs while their mistress wordlessly uncorked the cap and poured.

"It was just over a month ago – the shitty days kept coming one after the other. Credit cards cancelled … the rent hike … then that god-damn date at the casino. Fuck, I made such a jackass of myself! … Well, when I came to, I didn't even bother pouring a glass. I just ripped off the cap and–"

Aiko threw back her head, ramming the mug between her lips like a loaded gun. Not a rivulet spilled from her mouth – she guzzled down every last, foul drop and tossed the cup to the scorubs with a satisfied smack of her lips.

"And then," she panted, cheeks flush with madness, "and then the most _wonderful_ thing happened!"

Her body replayed the horrid, first drink – seizing in convulsions, gagging on her spit; Aiko hugged her chest, which threatened to cough up her lungs. What actually emerged from her mouth horrified Audrey: an exhale of black smoke, winter's breath stained in death's sickness. Exposed to the apartment air, the newborn wisp grew quickly – bubbling into a small cloud, swelling into a man-sized tempest, forming legs and limbs and a ghastly, faceless head.

"I freaked right the fuck out; tried to stab it and run from it but my baby was so patient with me. It followed me to my room, got down on its knees and it _worshiped me!_ Whatever I asked, it did!

"The more I drank, the more of them I coughed up! And the bottle? Kiddo, it never runs out! I could chug a swimming pool worth of this stuff and still have leftovers! No hangovers either – hello bubbly bliss, goodbye problems! I've been taking a thermos-full to work every day and damn me if classes haven't been bearable for a change! Whatever I need, my pups deliver! It's like I'm queen of the world!"

Audrey's heart-seizing gasp shook Miss Yumi from her reverie. "Hey, something up? My tits hanging out or something?"

"Your eyes –"

Miss Yumi's eyeglasses had fallen off during her suicidal gulp of sake. Without any lenses to distort Audrey's second sight, she was treated to a front-row demonstration of the bodily havoc done when a human being sucked off a bottle of raw, unfiltered black magic.

 _Holy mother of shit, her eyes!_

Where Tiffany's fairy magic had produced insect wings, shimmering skin and pink hair, Aiko's sake twisted her eyes into black and beady inkpot pits – as though her pupils had swollen over the entire expanse of her optic jelly. Rivulets of tar-like ichor ran from her tear ducts, nectar to the lucky scorubs who managed the climb atop her face to feast.

"Your eyes!" Audrey clenched her purse and returned Momo's tight-bodied squeeze. _Mother of fuck, you look like some gross-ass, beady-eyed bug!_

Miss Yumi quirked. "My eyes? What, bloodshot, baggy? Oh, hang tight one second."

Thirsty for air, the newborn shadow stretched its limbs and gave a mouthless groan before it plunged down on bended knee, a worshipful disciple. Miss Yumi gave it her godly blessing – a tousle of its bald head – and the silhouette was off, ducking into wisp form and jetting deeper into the apartment. Its two older siblings marched in pursuit.

The hair on Audrey's neck prickled. "Where're they going?"

Miss Yumi grinned madly. "Oh, just some work to take care of. I'm cooking up something special."

 _The hospital? Mother fucker, if they're headed to the hospital -_

Miss Yumi chuckled again, standing and beckoning her guests to follow. "Curious, huh? C'mon, I'll show you my little magic factory."

* * *

Audrey steeled herself for the most horrific manner of demonic rituals – gushing blood and rusted chains, cauldrons bubbling with foul, black magic. Instead she found apron-clad shadow creatures dicing veggies, debating spices and stirring up a stew pot.

Momo sniffed the kitchen aroma and her ears launched up in surprise. "Nyaa! Master, it smells tasty!"

Audrey launched her hands in the air. "What the crap is this?"

The diva counted at least a dozen shadows creatures in the kitchen and every last one laboured diligently at domestic chores. Withered herbs in a window-box and a scissor-bearing shadow creature pruning their dead leaves. A mountain of dirty dishes attended to by a shadow with a pink apron and scouring pad. A restaurant-sized assembly line occupied themselves peeling, chopping and plopping healthy vegetables into a tall, silver pot. Even Audrey found her taste buds turning traitor and salivating.

"Ooh, vegetable gumbo? Awesome job, guys!" Miss Yumi cheered. "Cooking, cleaning – they pretty much take care of all the chores. I'm even training one to mark all my midterms!"

Only a firm teeth-gnashing prevented Audrey from screaming until her hair ignited. "This is what you wanted to show me? Using these freaks as your personal maid service?"

"Well, yeah. What else would I use them for? I mean, they're handy but they are kinda dumb."

Audrey glanced over the house staff again. The herb-pruning shade groaned to itself as its shears chopped through the stem of a perfectly healthy plant. The dish-washing shade plunged its hands into the sink, only to pull back two dissolved arm stumps. At the dinner line, pandemonium erupted as their pot bubbled over and their mistress' precious stew frothed onto the cooktop. Every attempt to hand-scoop the liquid back into the pot resulted in a hiss of steam and scalded shadow hands.

Miss Yumi took in the chaos like a good-natured mother. "They're sweethearts, honestly. These pups keep sneaking out to bring back goodies for me. Oh - speak of the devil. Scooter!"

A black cloud squeezed itself through the open windowsill, trailing across the kitchen floor to coil around Miss Yumi's ankle like an affectionate dog. While the shadow creature rose into human form, Miss Yumi grabbed an empty tupperware and held it open.

"In the box, not on the floor," she commanded. From its chest, 'Scooter' vomited out its trashy treasure: cigarette butts, a broken beer bottle and a soda cup's worth of discarded Orange Crush, minus the cup.

"They're getting better," she explained. "The other day, they actually brought me a bottle of tequila. Still half full, too."

 _"Enough!"_

Audrey's outburst brought even the shadows to attention. Miss Yumi's black, bug eyes blinked quizzically as Audrey paced around the kitchen, anger frothing from her mouth.

"Why are you bullshitting me like this? Is this some lame-ass joke? I _know_ what you're really using these shadow freaks for! I saw what they did to Zoey! I was there when – God dammit, what did Tiffany ever do to you? Why'd you do it?"

"Do what?"

Audrey's scream was cut off by a sudden, male cheer erupting from beyond the paper-thin apartment walls, so loud that Audrey could make out the rowdy assholes hooting the name of Glenberry's star quarterback. _A football game?_ The neighbouring sports hooligans started stamping on the floor and banging on the walls in celebration.

"Arrgh, seriously?" Miss Yumi clutched at her skull, groaning like a brain-starved zombie as she banged on the connecting wall for silence. "I _told_ them about my migraines _._ Fuuuck, where's the aspirin? Scooter, boys – you got the aspirin?" Too impatient to wait, Miss Yumi dove into her sake bottle for relief. The shadows immediately stiffened at attention, their tasks forgotten as they turned towards their rice wine-guzzling mistress.

"Seriously, I wish someone would get that fat bastard to turn it down over there!"

The shadows glanced among each other – communicating by looks or some mental hive mind until they came to an agreement. The pair charged with chopping onions dropped their knives and marched for the front door. Miss Yumi was distracted scrounging through her freezer for an ice pack but Audrey saw them drop into stormcloud form and slither under the doorframe.

A moment later, the football hooligan party was interrupted by the crash of a heavy appliance hitting the floor.

"There we go…" Bug-eyes closed as her head absorbed the icy relief of a cold compress, Miss Yumi was none the wiser. The two shadows slithered back into the room, assumed their humanoid forms and continued peeling onions like nothing had happened.

"Huh, go figure. Looks like he actually turned the damn TV off. … Um, you okay, Belrose?"

"M-master? Momo can't tell if you're crying or laughing."

 _Neither can I, cat. Neither can I._

She had to clutch her face with both hands to catch the tears streaming from her eyes and stem the mad giggling erupting from her throat. _I'm broken!_ The strain of this week-long witch hunt had finally snapped the delicate cogs and gears of her mind. Every pent-up frustration came tumbling out in loud, broken guffaws that left her gasping for air.

"Oh god… Momo, isn't this rich?"

"Nyaa?"

Audrey stabbed a finger at her dumbstruck teacher.

" _You!_ _You don't have a hot clue what's going on here!_ " Audrey waved a hand over the collected shadow freaks. "Don't you get it? These things aren't puppies, they're not servants; fuck, they're not even freakin' demons. _They're genies!_ Genies from a fucking bottle and they've been granting your wishes!"

It was all coming together. Kyanna … Zoey … "The university. Right after you kicked me from the lecture, you said it –"

 _God, I wish I had something stronger._

Audrey rifled through her purse and slammed a silver flask on the table.

"My booze! That's why your little 'pup' went after me. Why it fought so hard to run off with my purse even after Momo slashed it to ribbons! It had to bring you my flask! And the dean –"

Aiko rolled her black bug-eyes. "Ugh, don't get me started on that bastard, Wormwood. Can't remember how many times he's made me suck him off before he'd renew my contract. Wish someone would sack him right in his moldy, old balls…"

The shadows betrayed no reaction. _She's gotta drink – that's their dog whistle!_

"On the weekend! You took a thermos of sake to Zoey's womyn's center meeting. You must have! That's why … at the mall –" Audrey pulled up her text messages to confirm. Sure enough:

 _=Wish someone would get me a stiff drink right about now...=_

"You wanted a drink. _That's_ why it was scrounging the food court trash! And the next day, when I was on campus to bitch-slap Zoey? You took a swig in your office. I remember it: _wish I could help you out with this bitch._ And yesterday when you dropped me off at Delrio's? _Here's wishing you luck getting up to this girl's place_. You were telling them to help me!"

Aiko quirked her head. "Did I say that?"

"Yes! Yes you fucking did! Look – just _look_ at what they did to Zoey!"

Audrey shoved her phone across Miss Yumi's kitchen table. Zoey's porn-stream-turned-snuff-film was already queued to play. She followed Miss Yumi's face shift from puzzlement, to alarm to all-out horror.

"The camera can't see them but they were there. Three of your little black doggies and they _did that_ to Zoey!"

"No …" Aiko dropped the phone as though it scalded her hand. "No, that can't be right. My pups … they're sweethearts! They're never rough unless I ask them! Even then, they always stop when I give them the safe word!"

"Master, what's a safe –? Mmph!"

Momo squirmed as Audrey clamped the little girl's ears shut. Glaring at Miss Yumi, her eyes nearly squinted shut.

"Seriously?"

Miss Yumi shrugged. "What? If I ask, they _can_ go anatomically correct. We've had some fun nights, right boys?"

The shadows out of her eyesight collectively hunched their shoulders in a cold and traumatized shiver. Even without faces, Audrey could tell they desired only the coldest of cold, cleansing showers.

"Don't you get it? Your little shadow fucks are retarded as all hell! They're too dumb to know when you really mean something – hell, maybe they just don't give a damn! They're always listening to you! And when you pour back the sauce and start muttering to yourself, they – they –"

Audrey's palms slammed into the table. She launched her face forward at Miss Yumi.

"Saturday morning. You were thinking _something_ about Tiffany! What did you say? What in the god-damn hell did you tell these shadow shits?"

"Nothing!" Miss Yumi exclaimed. "After Zoey's morning lecture at the womyn's center, I didn't have the brain cells left to think! But …"

"But?"

"Well, I guess I did start thinking about Friday's lecture. Y'know, after you and Zoey sorted out your shit it was actually pretty chill. Yeah … that's right – we didn't have Little Miss Cheerleader sticking her hand up every two minutes, rattling off all these PhD-level questions and making me look like an idiot. I mean, _you've got a textbook, sweetheart – use it. I'm just here to click the slides forward._ "

Miss Yumi tapped her chin. "Yeah, I guess I started thinking, _damn, I wish all my classes could be this easy._ "

Momo stifled the gasp from her tiny, kitten mouth. Throughout the kitchen, Aiko's shadows mindlessly carried about their tasks. Drowning dirty plates. Decapitating carrot stumps. Dismissing vegetable scraps into the garbage without a thought or care.

Just as they'd done to Tiffany.

Audrey lunged into Aiko's face, forcing the sake bottle to the older woman's lips. " _I wish nobody would hurt Tiffany Maye._ Say it! Drink up and say it!"

"Okay, okay. 'I wish nobody would hurt Tiffany.' Sheesh, you happy?"

 _Fucking exuberant,_ Audrey thought as she slumped into a kitchen chair. "Finally over…"

She glanced around. The shadows in the apartment hadn't reacted. It stood to reason that the freaks stationed at the hospital would need time to wander back after a recall but … what if the wish had to be sincere?

"The bottle. We have to smash it."

Miss Yumi reared back, clutching the sake to her chest like a helpless baby. "What? Belrose, are you out of your mind?"

"How long before you start drinking again? Maybe Tiff's safe for now but how long before you have another shitty day? How long before you get sloshed on sake and start muttering to yourself? How long before you start giving _them_ ideas?"

Audrey shook her head and held out her hand. "Give me the bottle, Miss Yumi. You're gonna hurt somebody!"

"No. No, no, no, no! I can handle this, trust me!"

"Trust you? What fucked-up moron with half a brain would ever trust you? Look at you! You let your apartment go to shit; you can't even look after a fucking houseplant! You've only got a job because you blow your boss and you _suck_ at it! You had all the money in the world but you flushed it down the shitter because you're some dick-hungry sex-maniac who had to gobble down her cousin's cock! _And you drink!_ Mother fucker, you were hammered when you drove me to Kyanna's! You could've gotten me killed in an accident, you bitch! You – you –"

Audrey fell to her knees, swamped with revulsion. "I wanted to be like you …"

"Belrose …" Miss Yumi knelt down with her, smiling patiently. "I've fucked up so much but I'm gonna do better now. Honest to god! Maybe my pups did hurt Zoey and Tiffany but I … I dunno, I'll wish for them to be better listeners or something! I need my pups, I need this bottle! Do you know what it feels like, living life just going through the motions? And then you get something worth living for?"

A vision of blonde hair, bright smiles - an offered hand - made Audrey stop and pause. "Yeah ... I do."

"Then you know I can't ever let this bottle go. Audrey, don't you see? I'm living again. I'm feeling _right_ again!"

A hand extended in offering. A hand and a smiling face lit up with horrid and bloody black bug eyes.

 _Only one hand left on the bottle._ "Momo! Grab it!"

The shadow's seized them both before they could even lunge – soot-black arms lashing into cords that bound their wrists, their waists, their necks. Aiko stood, glowering with betrayal.

"Every time," she seethed. "Every time I start to feel better, _people like you_ happen."

"Lemmie go, you drunken, dumbass piece of shit!"

"Oh, so we're name-calling, are we? Well fuck you, you pampered, prissy-ass rich girl! I thought we were tight. I had fun hanging out and shooting the shit with you! Boys, show her to the door. The cat too."

The shadow creatures did one better – reforming their regular arms, seizing the girls by shoulder and scruff and shoving them into the hallway.

"Ow! Momo, you okay?"

"Momo's okie-dokie, Master."

"Dammit, wait until I get my spell scrolls. We're going back in there, cat and we're gonna –"

It was then that she noticed the open apartment door. It was then she noticed the shadow creatures staring at her from the entryway.

Waiting.

Audrey's eyes went small as she heard the faint but all too clear sound of alcohol sloshing around a tipped bottle. "God dammit," she heard Miss Yumi grumble to herself. "I really wish I didn't have to see you in class tomorrow…"

Slowly, as though with relish, a dozen shadowy hands extended into a dozen black knives.

"Mother of-"

Audrey scrabbled off her ass and they ran.


	14. The Kitty Cat's Last Master

Audrey and Momo ran – scrambling down flights of stairs and barreling through apartment doors into the crowded streets below. The shadow creatures marched calmly in pursuit.

"Outta my way! Move it!" Audrey bodychecked anyone in her way, she bolted across intersections with zero shits given for the red traffic lights. Against her heavy-handed panting, the shadows never broke their purposeful strides. Whenever she and Momo put any distance between them, the monsters simply ducked into stormcloud form and slithered in pursuit like a nest of snakes. As soon as the gap closed, they resumed their humanoid pace. Without need for food or sleep, they had no reason to hurry.

 _Goddamn slow-ass idiots!_ Audrey could pen a book of curses to the people in her way. _While you're fucking around window shopping, I'm gonna get slaughtered!_

Compared to the wheezing from her smoker lungs, the kid barely looked winded. "Did you 'n Misato always run like this on your little adventures?"

"All the time," Momo panted back. "But whenever Misato transformed, it was her 'n Momo that did the chasing!"

Again with this transformation bullcrap? "Seriously? What did Misato turn into, a car?"

"No, a soldier!"

The cat-girl skidded to a halt. "Turn here, Master!"

Momo seemed to know her way around the streets so Audrey ducked between two apartment buildings with the cat, not realizing her mistake until it was too late.

"Dead end!" The alley ended in piles of garbage and a brick wall. "God dammit, we're trapped!"

"No, Master, _they're_ trapped." The kid was gasping for air but calm as ever - her animal instincts appraising the alley as a hunting ground. "Use the spell tags, Master. Make a safe circle at the back." Momo seized a handful of the scrolls to ward off the mouth of the alley.

"Kay, now what?" Audrey demanded once the cat-girl joined her within her protected corner at the alley's end. She noted the gap Momo had left in her tag line, wide enough for a person - or a person-shaped shadow - to waltz through. "Cat, you missed a spot!"

"It's part'a the plan, Master! They hafta come to us an' this place is so teeny-tiny there's no way for 'em t'get out. We'll catch 'em all at once with your pure-pure beam!"

Of course - a mouse trap, a roach motel! The shadow creatures would come in looking to dirty the alley with their blood, only to be purified in a dazzling wash of white.

There was only one flaw. "I can't purify for shit, cat!"

"Yes you can! You just need t'think of happy thoughts!" Momo clasped their hands together. "Deep inside of Master's heart, there's a tiny, white light. If Master just concentrates 'n gives it happy mem'ries, her light will grow strong! So super-strong 'n pretty, it'll come blasting out 'n make everything bad or mean disappear!"

Audrey thought back to the charred stink of her bedroom. "Momo, when we practiced, I couldn't-"

"You can! Momo believes in her Master! You just gotta –"

Too late. There was a sudden drop in temperature as all light fled from the alley, eclipsed by the horde of shadow beasts crowding at the entrance – a barrier of black nightmares cutting off all warmth all hope. Audrey shivered, chilled down to her marrow. Even the cat couldn't hide her worry. The dainty hands encircling Audrey's palms trembled. One by one, Aiko's shadows strode through the opening in Momo's spell tags, assembling into a wall of darkness. Audrey counted seven attackers in total.

This was it, no going back. "Okay. Warm 'n fuzzy." A thought. "Momo, what're you gonna do?"

Momo gave a bitter smile as she brought Audrey's hands to her kitten face and nuzzled her cheek along the kindly digits, savoring her Master's warmth. "We can't let the shadows get away. Somebody hasta close the alley."

"You're joking, right?"

"Momo will keep 'em busy, give Master time t'charge her spell."

"Cat -!"

Too late. With a last, parting smile, Momo stepped outside the spell tag sanctuary, turning to face the horde.

The shadows readied their weapons - arms twisting into blades, scythes and battle axes. In return, Momo kicked off her boots and pulled off her stockings, flexing the retractable kitten claws on her fingers and toes. She flicked her tail and tossed her head with feline swagger, snorting at the brandished weapons like the shadows were tiny, foolish mice baring their teeth.

"Momo feels sorry for you nasties. You're all just babies an' don't know how a'scared you should be! Nobody ever told you the stories about Misato-hime.

"Well Misato was a hero of justice! She was the strongest priestess ever and she stopped lotsa meanies way badder than you! Queen Nihilana? Poofed! The Nasty Five? Smooshed! An' know why you should be super-scared? 'Cause Momo helped Misato-hime every time!"

Leaping to her hind legs, she gave a curled, cat paw salute. "For the sake of her Master and all the people you're gonna hurt, Momo's gonna end your evil ways!"

The shadows offered no grand declarations, they simply marched forth to fulfill their mistress' bidding. Hackles raised, Momo stood her ground, unafraid. And when they raised their blades and Audrey was ready to pull out her hair in terror, Momo vanished.

The shadows stopped. They glanced around dumbly. The kitten had been standing right atop their very spot. Now there remained nothing but seven dumbfounded beasts and the stink of sulphur. By the time one of them noticed the cat-shaped silhouette slithering up the wall, its back curled like a spring, Momo had already pounced.

A snarling hellcat, she slammed the first shadow into the concrete, tearing up its throat and face before it could even scream. When its six comrades raised their blades to retaliate, Momo flashed underground, leaving them to hack up the body of their fellow silhouette.

With a fiery "nyaa", Momo launched skyward again, tackling a second shadow behind the knees and clawing through its shins. Panic reigned as the hamstrung shadow lost its balance and its scythe arm cleaved two more comrades in half.

Safe in her protective bubble, Audrey pumped her fist and cheered. "Fuck yes! Get 'em, get 'em!" Momo weaved in and out of shadow form, dodging the swipe of blades, clambering up the walls and launching herself claws-first to hack up the slow and bewildered shadow beasts. _She isn't fighting, she's dancing!_ A cat-tailed ballerina twirling and side-stepping her seven bumbling partners until they were literally falling to pieces, limbs ripped off by kitten fangs or bodies slashed in two by friendly fire. In this perilous dance where one wrong move forfeit your life, Momo dazzled.

But the cat-girl was only mortal. Momo skidded across the pebbly alley floor, panting heavily. The shadows knew no exhaustion. Piece by piece, the stormclouds knit themselves back together.

"Master!"

"Right!" No time to dick around just watching. Audrey had her own dance to prepare – _Purification!_

The kid said a 'light' resided within her heart but all Audrey felt inside her chest were churning guts and her stampeding heartbeat. _It's up there_ , she realized - deep in the recesses of her skull: the throbbing ache, the damn migraine that had tormented her ever since her second sight had flared up.

There lay her power - cramped into the tissue of her brain, a great iron engine kicking up feeble flashes of light as it struggled to come alive. Audrey could sense it clamoring for power, stamping angrily for the fuel that would send its might gears into motion. Clenching her fists, Audrey gulped down gasping pants of air. _Happy thoughts, happy thoughts..._

Nikki, opening her apartment door, inviting Audrey inside to help care for her fish.

Celeste, whispering over the phone, confessing how much she needed the tiny human.

That first miserable day of university, when a blonde-haired ray of sunshine had smiled upon her wretched form. _"Audrey? Audrey Belrose from Glenberry High? No way, you're going to U of G too?"_

The happiest, bubbliest, most cherished shards of memory – Audrey offered them up like pages from a scrapbook, feeding them to the blackened coal pit of her mind. Her eyes flashed open.

Nothing. The pounding headache continued unappeased. "Why can't I work this shit? C'mon, dammit - purify!"

Her panicky eyes picked up a waft of black smoke to her side. She double-checked the battle. Momo continued her dance with ... Wait, six, only six shadow beasts? The seventh stood by her spell tag barrier, watching.

 _Is this shithead taking a breather?_ It didn't even glance at her, seeming to have tasted the sting of her good vibe spell barriers before. Its faceless maw monitored the battle - Momo's elegant leaps and twists, its brethren's bumbling hacks and swings. The inky-black fingers at its hip began counting time.

 _One, two three. One, two three._ Its palm tapped a musical rhythm.

Momo continued her fight between two and three dimensions, slashing one shadow's legs off then ducking into the ground. The sidelined shadow kept on tapping.

 _One, two three, one two three._

Momo surfaced and Audrey's blood ran cold. _That shit's counting how long Momo stays in shadow mode!_ "Momo!"

The battle noises swallowed Audrey's warning. Satisfied with its reconnaissance, the seventh shadow strolled back into the combat zone, fingers tapping _one, two three, one two three._

 _She's not gonna see it in time!_ Audrey clenched her eyes and fists, willing her power to manifest. Momo flattened into shadow form and the seventh silhouette spread its fingers into hooked talons, its sharpened tips tapping _one two three, one two three._

"Purify, purify, purify!" She had them all in her sights, dammit!

Momo slashed and ducked once more, her kitten silhouette dashing up the brick walls. One, two three. One two -

Through the brick – and through the shadow cat. Black talons speared Momo to the wall.

"MOMO!"

The image burned into Audrey's brain – Momo's silhouette frozen in alarm. Ears and tail stiffened in a tableau of unspeakable pain as the kitten registered the four black knifepoints invading her form.

The spear tips withdrew, the cat silhouette wobbled. In a graceless slump, Momo materialized from the brick wall, tumbling in the dirt and clutching her belly.

"Master..."

Seven sharpened blades raised high. "Momo, get out of there!"

"Master … Momo can't –"

Audrey's lunged faster than her mind could keep up, out of the safe zone to Momo's side, snatching the kid under the shoulders and yanking her back. Black axes shattered into the concrete, kicking up chunks of stone that bit at her retreating heels. The shadows pursued her to the protective circle, hissing and wincing as their negative energies impacted the magical dome.

Audrey didn't stop to watch their pain. Momo's skin was cold to the touch. She hugged the cat-girl into her chest to stave off the heat bleed. "Cat? Cat, speak t'me!"

Her Momo was a wreck, sliced and bruised from limb to limb. Her white tank top had been slashed open across her ribs. Black smoke wafted from a cut in her belly. Whatever fluids pumped through her otherworldly veins didn't take kindly to human air. Her blood evaporated on contact, dissolving into the atmosphere. Momo coughed, retching up the same black haze from her lungs and staining her lips with powdered charcoal.

"Momo… feels so cold, Master."

Audrey clamped her hands over the wound. "Keep it together, cat, you've got this!"

They were safe, but for how long? The battle, the near victory had sent the shadows into a frenzy, reducing them to bloodthirsty beasts. Ignorant of pain, their blows thundered down faster and heavier, pelting down like rain until Audrey could see the outline of her invisible shield crackling under the impacts. They wanted her blood and they would throw their bodies into the fray to get it.

A primal roar – _enough!_ The seventh shadow pushed its comrades aside, frustrated and wanting this finished in one blow. Its arms raised and merged into a gigantic executioner's axe – a razor-edged guillotine ready to finish the mistress' command.

Momo saw the weapon, squirmed as she tried to offer a last defense. "You can't … hurt Momo's … Master…"

"God dammit cat, stay down!"

"Momo... hasta... protect her-"

 _Dammit to hell!_ As the great axe swung down, as Momo lifted herself to intercept, Audrey felt the rusted gears of her mind catch and jam. Vision blurred, colour dimmed. Her brain ground to a halt, kicking up sparks.

Momo, hurt and helpless.

The shadows, stupid and loyal.

Miss Yumi, the master _moron_ behind this attack, drunk off her ass right this minute and fucking clueless to the shit she'd disturbed.

Every image rushed into her mind like a blast of air from the bellows, stoking a core primal and red.

Audrey shut her eyes, holding back the raging spike in her headache. Her gray matter sizzled, her skull superheated and in an instant of white-hot clarity, Audrey realized her folly. _Purification…_ so kind, so merciful, so forgiving. _Fuck that noise!_ Aiko's shadow freaks deserved but one fate and that was to " _BURN!"_

Red eyes snapped open for the first time.

The shadow's axe exploded into flame.

Chaos overtook the horde. The axe wielder screamed a mouthless scream and flailed its burning arms, desperate to stamp out the flames. Its brothers scrambled back, instinctively terrified of the dancing, red tongues. One of them was stupid enough to try use the confusion and take a swing at Momo.

Audrey opened her eyes again, conduits for an unspeakable heat that travelled with bullet speed along her vision. Fire burst from the second shadow's shoulder. The shadow freak cried out and bashed itself against the alley walls, wailing for mercy.

"What just -?" Audrey woke as from a daze, wondering why two of her assailants were now screaming and batting out flames. The shadows had no real skin to speak of, no flesh to blacken and burn but their screams of pain were hauntingly human. _Did I …?_

"Master ... used her powers." The frailty behind Momo's voice startled her. The cat-girl's golden almond eyes flickered with pride. "Momo knew Master could find her light."

 _"Find my light?"_ The injury must have been dulling her slight. "Cat, this isn't light!" Nothing about this was pure or good, it was just -

 _Burning._ Oh god, she could smell the ash in her eyes!

"What's wrong with me, Momo?"

"Momo dunno. Maybe Master's only really happy when she's being a grumpy-wumpy."

That sent her smirking. "God, you're way too cute, y'know that, cat?"

"Master smiled…" Now the look of contentment in those eyes was complete. "Momo's so happy. Now Master can ... protect herself no matter what." More smoke coughed out of Momo's throat, prompting Audrey to shush the cat-girl.

"Hey, relax. We're gonna get you better, then I'm gonna getcha that lemonade and scratch your ears, kay?"

"M-kay, Master. 'Cept …Momo's … getting tied…"

In a gasp of horror, Audrey realized that Momo's legs had slipped into a smoky puddle. She was retreating into shadows again, sinking underground.

"Momo? Cat, what're you doing? Keep it together here!"

"So tired…" Momo's arms fell to the ground, those too melting into black ink. Her entire body was going limp and loose – unravelling into formless shadow.

"No... No, you can't do this, cat! Stay with me!"

"Smile, Master." Nothing but a head was left to cradle and yet Momo remained so impossibly happy. "Momo loves her Master so much..."

"Momo!"

The cat girl slipped under, leaving only a sizzling, inky puddle. The liquid rippled, a last clump of bubbles surfaced and then the watery shadow gathered itself into a mass that slowly pushed up into the third dimension.

Audrey held her breath but all that rose was the limp form of a fuzzy little kitten, its belly scarred and its eyes closed. The same kitten who had licked her fingers that first night outside Lusties.

"Momo? Momo?"

It didn't move, didn't respond to her prods. It didn't breathe.

Audrey covered her mouth, covered the horrified scream lodged in her throat. Salty tears sizzled down her cheeks and every drop that hit the weathered concrete ignited into flame.

Farther out in the alley, Miss Yumi's shadow freaks had extinguished their comrades and regrouped, weapons retracted and palms raised wearily. Under Audrey's fury, they quietly backpedalled until the spell tags at the mouth of the alley nipped their heels. There was no way out.

"You really are just a shitty-ass bunch of brainless kids," Audrey seethed as she stepped forward, kicking apart her spell tag cocoon. "What, you think Mommy Aiko's gonna come save you? Don't count on it."

Happy thoughts, treasured memories. _Sugar, spice and everything nice._ Maybe that was the winning combination for a proper virgin priestess but not her. Not Audrey.

"I'm broken." She laughed out the epiphany, teeth stretching wide and crazy. Hate, rage. _Smokes 'n shots and everything hot!_ She was a cheap imitation, a Chinatown knock-off of a magical princess. She couldn't help, she couldn't heal; she couldn't even save a damn cat.

 _But fuck do I know my way around a cigarette lighter…_

The shadow with the axe, the time-counting one. Audrey locked its trembling form in her sights and she opened her eyes once more.

Its entire head exploded in flame.

It cried, it clawed; it tried to shake off its coat of flame but Audrey spared no mercy. "You're not getting out of this one, fucker!" Eyes locked, teeth clenched, Audrey poured out her will – wrenched open the blast doors of her inner furnace, not to purify – no, nothing so merciful – but to destroy!

Tongues of fire blossomed from the shadow's hands, its belly, its head, devouring the creature, bit by bit; strand by shadowy strand until it could no longer maintain a human form. It collapsed into a cloud that continued to squeal and writhe in agony, even as it grew smaller, dimmer, weaker –

To nothing.

Six remaining shadows regard the ash scraps of their brother and the fiery priestess. All together they turned and fled to the barrier, banging their fists against the impenetrable barrier, desperate to find some small, merciful escape!

Audrey clutched her eyes. It hurt... _Dammit, it hurt!_ Like someone had shoved a flash bulb behind her eyes! And the stink! The awful, clinging stink of charcoal, like she was...

 _Burning!_ Audrey looked to her hands, consumed in flame. Mother of fuck, she was burning! Spinning towards a half-shattered mirror that had been thrown out with the refuse, her reflection was a gasping nightmare - flames sprouting from her chest, encircling her legs, engulfing her hair. Audrey screamed.

"Get it off! Get it off!"

Her skin didn't break, her hair didn't whither but she felt the heat close all around her. She saw it in tortured flashes - her hair dangling over her face. Saw the blue and black ink sizzle from her locks, saw the strands beneath superheat to white. _It hurts, it hurts, it-_

 _Power._ Her lips gasped with ecstatic revelation. This fire wasn't pain it was power! The flames that had burned her enemy beyond ash now embraced her – offered their strength. Audrey ceased her screaming, put an end to her silly, useless flailing and she stood. She allowed the flames to encircle her, allowed them change her.

Her hands. She watched the flames draw into her hands, hardening and blackening like cooling magma until her palms were encased in black finger gloves, each tip ending in a primal razor claw.

The fire spread over the length of her bloodstained white dress, sheathing it in a glittering twilight. Not the glitter of black sequins but coal black diamonds, an impenetrable armor. A ragged, red bandana looped backwards around her neck and shoulders, the tips wafting off hot embers.

Around her legs, a skirt of silver saw blades jutted from her hips, the layers of hooked metal clinking with her first, newborn steps. Knee-high stilettos stabbed into the ground with every stuttering step, the heels sharp and rusted like carpenter nails.

Her hair, the only part she recognized. Inferno red, the tips and bangs burned down to ash white. Above her ear, a final flame blossomed into a sickly black rose – a last decorative flourish.

Audrey flexed her claws, tested her metal skirt and spiked heels. The get-up was ugly as sin, a schoolgirl uniform from Nikki's gross-ass anime, emo black fused with junky metal but she didn't give a damn. There was no shock at her transformed clothes or recoloured hair, only … calm. Collected. Cool and unbreakable. The fires had forged her into something great and terrible. A weapon to strike at the darkness with her own ugly flame. _A pretty little soldier._

While the six shadows scrabbled at the walls of their cage, Audrey exhaled. No cigarette, joint or shot had ever filled her with such utter calm.

She inhaled deeply – flooding her lungs with the oxygen fuel – and she screamed.

The shadows burned.

Only when her work was done – only when the ashes were too tiny and scattered to see – did Audrey allow herself to gag and sputter. Her throat tasted like ash and her nostrils burned with char. _God dammit, why's it hurt like this?_

A lingering glance at the unmoving kitten set her resolve. "Miss Yumi..."

The name sizzled past her lips with the bitterest of hate. Her target, her mission. A darkness only she could cleanse. Like Momo and Misato before her, she balled up her gloved fist as she delivered her declaration of holy war.

"Aiko Yumi… for the sake of my Momo and for all my friends you've fucked over, I'm going to beat the shit out of your sorry, drunken ass!"


	15. Fire Woman

Outside the front lobby of Miss Yumi's apartment, a lone shadow creature shifted aimlessly on guard duty. Moments ago, the mistress had called for their attention: bringing the holy bottle to her lips and demanding (in that peculiar, slurred tone her voice often took) that _"I don' wanna shee nobody here n'more!"_

Orders received: further guests were prohibited from entering the building.

The shadow creature's shoulders fell in its approximation of a sigh. Playing doorman was such deathly dull work. If only it could have joined its brethren in hunting down the cat creature and odd human girl who could track their invisible motions. The thrill of the chase, the joy of hunting an enemy - now there was an order to take pride in! Still, the mistress' orders were absolute. It would fulfill its duty to the best of its abilities.

A frightened squawk from around the corner drew its attention. _Oh?_

A small, hook-nosed greblin was scampering down the sidewalk at high speed. _How curious._ The tiny imps normally raced to create all sorts of mischief, but this one seemed to be fleeing danger. Its tiny eyes were gripped by the terror of a small animal escaping a larger predator.

 _How strange..._

Before the shadow had time to digest the odd sight, further shrieks commanded its attention: more greblins, six of them, galloping on all four limbs towards the building. The shadow tensed – _any further guests_ – but the mischievous imps banked hard right and continued fleeing down the sidewalk.

Further frightened howls: from around the same corner, magical creatures of all shapes and sizes flapped, dashed and skittered in mindless terror. An entire flock of oily-winged cawglers barreled through the air, swarms of draydids buzzed their wings in overdrive and ten colonies of queequays scrambled on their tiny legs – all seeking shelter from an unspeakable terror. The shadow creature assumed the cause to be the blimp-sized Chinese dragon pursuing the animals but with a sudden burst of speed, Bessie shoved its way through the horde, eyes small, beady and utterly consumed by a mad flight to save its life.

The shadow creature strained its neck to see – what ungodly beast had driven the city's magical creatures into such a frenzy? What behemoth, what titan?

Its answer came in the form of a tiny human girl marching after the horde with fiery hair. "Yeah, you'd better stay out of my way, you freaks!"

The seeing-eye girl? Impossible! Her hair had been a dull black, not this fiery red! The power emanating from her had been the tepid glow of coals, not this unquenchable furnace blast! Now, every stamp of her heels scratched embers from the concrete. Every swing of her metal skirt sent a battalion of sawblades clinking with deadly intent. A warrior priestess, eyes furious with the promise of fire and destruction.

 _What had -? How had she -?_

By the Anchor, did answers matter? The priestess' eyes locked on the shadow. When it saw her fists and teeth clench with such force and determination that powdery ash ground from her palms, it didn't simply backpedal, it dived for the door, to wrench it open, to escape and –

Audrey allowed the shadow two steps inside the lobby before she devoured it in flame. Her gloved hand caught the open door and threw it aside.

"Round two, bitch."

* * *

Up the stairwell, stilettos tramping over each and every step like it was her physics teacher's head. Down the hallway to the hated apartment door, every footstep singeing the carpet. She could still smell the noxious whiff of _wrongness_ seeping from Aiko's property. _Disgusting_ , Audrey sneered. Before, it had made her tremble; now, the stench merely filled her with revulsion. _Time to snuff you out._

The doorknob rattled under Audrey's claw-tipped black glove. Locked.

 _Like that'll keep you safe._

Audrey stepped back and channeled her will into the metal knob. In her mind's eye she saw the round handle tremble as it super-heated into a red glow, saw it sag and lose shape as her priestess purification reduced the metal to molten slag sizzling on the carpet.

In reality, the doorknob stood firm and untouched by her magical assault. If it could make a face, it would have been severely unimpressed.

"What the fuck?" Was she doing it wrong? Her eyes were welling up with ash, just like when she'd burned the alleyway freaks. Why wasn't it working?

Wait... Did this purification only work on magical creatures and artifacts?

"Fuck this janky-ass shit!" Audrey's boot hoofed through the drywall. What good was it to have a magical flamethrower if you couldn't roast a bitch like a marshmallow?

In a rush of anger, her claws seized the doorknob and yanked it clean off the frame. Audrey wanted to credit the destruction to some newfound, magical super-strength but the show of force probably had more to do with the apartment's second-rate building materials.

 _Whatever_. Audrey kicked down the door, sending scorubs skittering from her path. " _Aiko!_ "

"What, you again?" Miss Yumi stormed into the living room, bottle in hand and shadow guards at her sides, her slacker calm replaced with fierce irritation. The scorub-littered prof reared back at Audrey's refitted hair and outfit. "Ooo-kay? You stop off at a fetish shop, kiddo?"

Audrey opened her eyes. _Boom._ One shadow creature erupted into flames. "Whoa!"

 _Boom._ Aiko's second bodyguard exploded. "My pups!" Jaw agape, the teacher knew what came next.

"Not my bottle!" Flinching, she hid the sake in her arms. Audrey didn't skip a beat. _Boom._ Miss Yumi reared back and screamed as a blast of fire consumed her jacket sleeves.

Audrey wanted to gloat and relish the panic but the flames lasted barely a second – the time it took to incinerate the black and beady scorubs that had been crawling along her teacher's arms. Miss Yumi blinked, her body unscathed.

"God dammit!" Audrey opened her eyes again, blasted Aiko with everything she had. The flames came in harmless bursts. Explosions of bugs popped off like fire crackers but she couldn't touch Miss Yumi. _Dammit, I really can't hit anything but magical crap!_

"Neat party trick." Miss Yumi swigged from her bottle, eyes bulging black. "Pin her!"

The counter-attack came from all sides: tendrils of shadow lashing her wrists, her neck – pulling her limbs taut and forcing Audrey to her knees. She managed to singe one of the shadow freaks before another crushed its freezing cold fingers around her head, fingers clamping down her eyelids. Audrey snarled and snapped but with her eyes shut, she was powerless.

 _Piece of shit magic!_ "Lemmie go! Nobody touches me! Nobody –"

Miss Yumi silenced her with a slap across the face. "Breaking down my door? I'm calling the cops."

"This shit again? Fuck you and your shadows! You killed my cat!"

"Yeah, well you killed my smoking buddy! Her name was Audrey and she was super chill!"

That didn't make a lick of god damn sense! "Big, fucking surprise - you're completely shit-faced!"

"Yeah, well maybe I needed a drink after my best friend tried to stab me in the back!" Though blind, she could hear the liquor swish in Aiko's hand. "You're not taking this bottle from me. I won't let you break it."

The cords around her throat tightened. Audrey gagged. "Break it? Why the fuck would I do that?"

"Wait, what?"

She had her distracted. This was good. The noose around her neck slackened, letting her breathe.

"Yeah, change of plans. Y'see, I thought I found me some kick-ass magic but it _sucks major balls_. Can't purify for shit, I can't even burn things properly!"

While she spoke, Audrey focused on the wretched engine in her head, feeding it her hate, her misery and all her pent-up rage. The gears buckled but she forced her inner power to charge.

"But you, Miss Yumi? You've gotta sweet deal. All those 'pups' doing whatever you want? Like a goddamn queen! So I've decided. I'm gonna make sure that bottle stays safe and sound - with _me!_ "

Eyes shut, there was no target for her fire, no outlet for her swelling inferno. Instead, Audrey ignited the only magical thing she could see and sense.

Herself.

A pillar of flame exploded from her body, knocking Miss Yumi and her shadows across the room.

"My glasses!" Blinded, Miss Yumi patted the floor in a panic. "Scooter, boys – somebody find my glasses!"

 _Fuck me, that's gonna leave a mark._ No blisters but Audrey's skin throbbed with the mother of all sunburns. Her lungs coughed up black smoke but she forced herself to sit up and take stock – Miss Yumi, blind and helpless. The shadows – flat on their asses or fumbling about for her lost specs.

 _The bottle!_ There, in a corner by the kitchen! Too dizzy from her kamikaze blast to stand, Audrey crawled forward on hands and knees.

A cold whip snared her ankle. "Stop her! Don't let her touch it!"

Audrey glared back and the rope around her leg snapped into flame. Another lashed at her wrist, then around her waist. _Persistent little fucks!_ As fast as she burned them down, the shadows snared her in fresh bonds until she had no choice. With a roar, she clawed her way forward, dragging the shadows like weighted chains. _Just a little closer…_

"Tie her down! Do whatever you have to!" Black tears trembled from Miss Yumi's bug eyes. "You can't have it! It's mine!"

Another claw forward, another feral yank against her chains. Even as her gloved fingertips brushed against the bottle, the shadows went for her neck. _Choking … me…_

The bottle. Her palm snapped around it.

"NOOO!" At Miss Yumi's command, dozens of shadows snared her tight with a grip to throttle the life from her throat.

 _Too late, bitch._ Audrey raised the bottle high, flipped the stopper and –

A hush of silence.

Blind and useless, Miss Yumi had relied on her ears to track the struggle - a gagging throat, Audrey's animal roars. Now, all was eerily quiet. Just a sudden, collective _thump –_ like dozens of ropes hitting the floor and the low, rhythmic _glug_ of liquid sloshing from its container.

Finally, she found her eyeglasses and fixed them tight. What she saw made her pale in terror:

Her shadows, encircling Audrey's fallen body. Every last one bowing in reverence.

A low, serpent-like hiss twisted from the ring of shadows.

 _"Yesss… oh yesss!"_

Audrey Belrose stood, reborn. A twisted, black flower rising from the ashes, decorated in obsidian robes and crowned with hair the colour of hellfire. None of her young, arrogant posturing remained – the aggressive glaring, the in-your-face attitude. This new Audrey was the picture of absolute confidence and control – the self-assurance of a woman who knew she was unstoppable.

Audrey devoured a second gulp from the sake bottle. Where Aiko had wretched out her lungs like a newbie smoker, Audrey merely exhaled – releasing a blast of demonic vapour, black and crackling with red lightning. The thundercloud swirled into the shape of a young woman, curvaceous and flicking her waist-long twin-tails. The newly-born shadow creature knelt before her creator.

Audrey turned to face Miss Yumi, eyes sunken and black - and she cackled. The horrid, fiendish crow of witch.

"Now _this_ is power!"

The shadows parted as their new mistress strode forward. "You finally get it, Miss Yumi? Scooter, all your _pwecious widdle puppies?_ They never gave a rat's ass about you. You were never their mommy – just the one drinking from the bottle. And now …"

Audrey drank again, commencing her wishes.

"Grab her. Hold her down."

Two shadows snapped Miss Yumi's arms behind her back. She yelped as they shoved her face into the bug-encrusted carpet.

"Make me a throne!"

Five shadows melted and merged into a high backed chair. _Not enough._ "Higher!" Four more added their mass until the queen's seat towered over the room. Audrey ascended a short staircase to sit and survey all.

"This is – this is –"

Words didn't do justice. Better than booze, better than any release from her vibe. She was riding a non-stop high that kept her coming without end, without tiring.

From the floor, Miss Yumi struggled to look up. "Feels good, doesn't it? Being able to do whatever you want?"

Audrey grinned. "Whore, you have no idea!"

She could feel the bottle's power mingling with her own – weaving into her brain, fortifying her simple, magical engine into an industrial furnace. Audrey's second sight blazed into overdrive. She and the shadows were one – whatever they saw, she saw. A city-wide network of wandering shades fed into her central hub, exposing all of Glenberry, magic and mundane to her queenly eyes.

She saw more than mere secrets, she saw _potential!_ Thousands of future pathways opened before her eyes, a highway of endless, dazzling possibilities – hers to command, hers to control!

"Maid service, beer runs." She scoffed at Miss Yumi's pedestrian wishes. "You thought so small…" There was no limit to what these shadow beasts could accomplish, no length they wouldn't go to please their mistress. They couldn't die, couldn't tire.

And they were hers to command.

The grudges she could settle, the prestige she could gather. Audrey saw the world and all its treasures open before her – saw it wreathed in fire and mayhem! "Fuck this priestess shit! Fuck being a shadow master!"

She was a _goddess!_

"Now, let's get this show on the road." The goddess of the new world guzzled a generous swig of elixir, beckoning her dark children to listen as she leaned down from her throne to deliver her first command.

"Give me back my cat."

Had they eyes, the shadows would have blinked dumbly.

Had she spoken too softly? Audrey repeated, louder.

"Give me back my cat!"

The shadows glanced amongst each other, puzzling. Audrey spelled it out clearly.

"Momo! Momo! You killed my Momo and I want my Momo back! _Give me back my cat!_ "

Mute and dumb, the shadows debated in heated pantomime among one another: _the cat creature? We killed that thing, right? Can we bring it back? How_ do _you bring it back?_ Finally, the one called Scooter raised its hands to call for order. Designating itself as spokesman, Scooter looked to at their goddess and offered up the group consensus:

A baffled shrug.

Audrey's eyes sizzled red.

"Then what the fuck are you good for?"

She raised the bottle up high – Miss Yumi and the shadows gave a voiceless cry – and whipped it to the ground.

Pandemonium. The bottle exploded into a maelstrom of black, magical energy. A bomb of black light and swirling tempests consumed the apartment. Audrey's throne collapsed, Miss Yumi howled and the shadow creatures shrieked as though each and every one of them had just witnessed their living heart being torn out and smashed.

They began to unravel – heads, torsos, and limbs sucking into the center of the tempest. No longer solid creatures but a hurricane of magic particles seeking shelter, seeking home.

 _Liquor,_ she realized, _they're all made of liquor._

A bolt of red lightning shot at Audrey; before she could react it zapped up her nose and she gagged. _Fuck, my head!_ Like she'd just downed an entire bottle of tequila!

The remaining shadows circled Miss Yumi, the eye of their hurricane hunger. She opened her mouth to scream and the shadow tendrils jammed themselves down her throat, up her nostrils, into her eyes, pouring their black essence into her body.

And when the last vile vapour found its way into her body, the violence ceased. Sunlight returned, silence reigned. Miss Yumi knelt on the floor, frozen in a silent scream.

A tilt, a wobble. Her body crashed to the floor and she found her voice.

"FUUUCK! MY HEAD! MY HEAD!"

Audrey was aching from chugging down a single alcohol shadow. She didn't dare contemplate how much booze that lush had been force-fed. Standing, she left the whore to her screaming, listening as the wailing formed into a curse.

"-away from me. Took everything away from me, you _bitch!"_

Audrey tossed her hair. "Got that half-right. I'm a _mega-bitch_."

At the smashed-in entryway, she paused. _The scorubs._ The little grubs responsible for this shit show, swarming around emo Aiko and letting their magical energy bleed, year by year into the sake bottle. Even now, they consumed the apartment surfaces, invigorated by Aiko's new despair. _It's not over, not yet._

Locking her eyes onto the skittering horde, Audrey took the deepest breath and set the entire apartment on fire.

Rugs, walls, ceiling – Audrey's flames surged over every surface, cleansing the insect pestilence in unholy heat. The vermin shrieked as they dropped from the ceiling and burst open on the floor.

It was torture - opening her power for so long and over such a large space but Audrey forced her body to endure the heat, cooking the apartment until she'd reduced every single insect to magical dust.

"Shit…" She staggered into the hallway, eyes weeping ash. She felt ready to collapse and sleep an entire week, but one last task remained.

"Tiffany…"

* * *

 _Tired ... so tired..._

Audrey hobbled down the hospital corridor, trailing withering flecks of ash. Her magical armor was crumbling. Already one of her stilettos had snapped off, leaving her to limp awkwardly in broken heels. An entire shoulder had cracked off her black dress and her sawblade skirt clinked dully. She didn't dare glance at her hair but she could feel the red blaze abandoning her.

The hospital staff called after her, demanding she stop and return at proper visiting hours. She limped onward. She'd been through too much to stop for formalities.

 _I need to see you..._

Tiffany.

Still lifeless as ever, a china doll tucked under white bed sheets. Still stabilized by IV drips and a respirator's mask. Audrey glanced to the sides of the bed, where four crystalline dragonfly wings still lay limp as withered flowers.

"Tiffany..."

Just saying her name sapped her remaining energy. Audrey slumped into the bedside chair, forcing her parched throat to rasp out the good news:

"It's over. All those shadow freaks? Well, they're gone. I killed 'em. They're can't hurt you anymore."

She didn't know what she'd been expecting. That Tiffany would instantly wake up, bright as sunshine? No, the damage had been done.

"Hey, you listening? I said it's all safe now, so ... come back, already."

She hesitated for an eternity before gathering the courage to reach out and take that pale, petite hand in her scaly, black glove. _Cold._ Cold as ice, like the life had been sucked from her bones. Audrey, even in her weakened state, still felt her own body glow with the residual heat from her magical blasts.

A flicker. In the corner of her eye, Audrey noticed Tiffany's dragonfly wings stir. She stood to inspect but their movement died the instant she released Tiffany's hand. Cluing in, she gripped Tiffany's two hands. The wings roused once more.

Magic. _Is this what you want?_

She seized Tiffany's lifeless palms, pressed them tight against her face and prayed to whatever higher power could hear. "Please… I'm a shitty friend, I'm useless as a priestess; I can't even keep a cat safe. But just … dammit, just this once, let me do something right."

Audrey opened her eyes – let the magical flames lance out, slowly and carefully. _Let me keep you warm._

The fairy wings latched onto her; she grimaced, feeling them feed off her dwindling energy until her black dress crumbled into powder and her fiery hair snuffed out. All that mattered was holding Tiffany close.

The wings thrummed, newly invigorated. Audrey stepped back as the phantom limbs curled around Tiffany's body, four crystalline tourniquets pressing against her injuries. The accident had left Tiffany scarred and broken but wherever the wings and their fairy dust touched, her skin glowed fresh and new. The wings cling tighter and tighter until they began to shrink into Tiffany's body, soothing and mending her innermost injuries until they disappeared entirely.

Audrey watched, not realizing how long she'd been holding her breath until -

 _Cough._

"Auud - rey?"

"Tiffany?" Audrey leapt to her feet, throwing back the blankets and helping her friend out of the breathing mask. The doctors had spouted all sorts of warnings about her spine and her mobility but, with help, Tiffany groggily sat up as though she'd suffered no more than a bad night's sleep.

"Thought I ... heard you… calling. Hey, Audrey..."

"Tiffany? Omigod, you're awake! You're okay! You're -"

Her fist slammed the nightstand, rattling the potted cactus.

"That's it? You're just gonna wake up and _'hey, Audrey'_ me like nothing happened? You almost died! Do you know what shit I had to go through? The crap I had to deal with? I could've - I almost -"

Audrey buried her tears in Tiffany's embrace. "You can't ever make me worry like that! Never again!"

 _I'm such a wreck_ , she cursed. Typical Audrey Belrose - falling to pieces and clinging to Tiffany to keep it together. And Tiffany, ever the saint, just held her in return, let her bawl everything out while she stroked her hair and whispered sweet assurances.

"Hey, Audrey. It's okay. It's gonna be all right."

"No ... no it's not. My cat ... Momo, she … she's gone, Tiff. She's dead."

"Oh... oh, Audrey..."

When hospital security finally caught up with the intruder, the scene left them speechless. The patient, moments ago barely clinging to life, now sitting up and smiling gently as the sunset's glow fell over her bed. An unfamiliar girl – dressed in rags and smelling of soot – had thrown herself across the patient's lap, where she'd cried herself to sleep.

They held each other, two halves of a whole, finally complete, finally at rest.

* * *

 **We're almost there, folks. Just a bit of falling action to tidy up things.**

 **For now, though - rest easy, Audrey. You've earned it.**


End file.
